Technology

Perhaps the actual answer is for people to learn self control.

Ehhhh no.

I can get behind "ban spying on me."

I can even get behind "ban social media, especially the kind that makes you sell yourself, though pseudononymous link aggregators are less the issue."

But "no more torrenting at work, no more reading digitally while pooping, no more encrypted chats, now have to carry a book, a camera, an mp3 player, my GBC, and a dumb phone, just to make up for the phone?"

No.

Is Jacobin just garbage or am I just seeing only garbage articles?

No. Smartphones convicted the murderer of George Floyd. Smartphones have shown to the world the police brutality that happens at peaceful protests. Technology isn't inherently evil, it's how its used.

How about no. I've been wanting a pocketable "do everything" device since I got a Tiger Electronics Pokedex as a kid.

How about better regulations on the obscene amount of data collection going on behind our backs? I can't count how many times I've come across even just websites that have a giant "accept all cookies" button, but in order to reject any, you have to dig through layers and layers of "settings". The most I've seen was 80+. And that's just websites.

I'm about to wipe my phone and go all-in on Calyx OS.

Me who has a disability which prevents me from speaking and hearing people and renders me bedridden.

“Okay, guess I’ll die then”

The problem is with planned obsolescence and capitalist drive to always make more. The device itself is not inherently bad, it's a glorified calculator.

Hey David, can you guess how many people are reading your article from a smartphone? Convenient, isn't it.

Want to complain about smartphones? Write a book... or something that can be published on fucking paper.

Ban social media and advertising/marketing. Smart phones are just a small computer.

I'm pretty far down the luddite/makhaevist wormhole... But this is just a garbage idea.

Ban smartphones makes about as much sense as ban drugs or ban guns. It does nothing to address root causes and will do little to change anything for the better. Societal issues take more than “make X illegal”.

This is literally not a problem with smartphones, the problem is about the software you decide to run on it. A smartphone is simply a very powerful pocket computer.

Smartphones are fine, it's just a small computer that can make calls and is connected to the internet. You're using it wrong.

If people can't control themselves or their kids, it's not my problem.

Author admits smartphones are ubiquitous, and doesn't at all consider, in a hypothetical situation where everyone unanimously agreed to stop using them, where all this e-waste will go?

Also, how do you disillusion the millions of people that use them religiously?

I get the sentiment, but only a significant technologically literate society would really appreciate the need for greater control over their devices and actually possess the skills needed to modify and configure them.

Many of us want to disconnect, but we can’t do so alone — not without losing touch with the world around us. Disconnection, today, carries real social and economic costs. Until such time as smartphones and social media can be democratically governed or nationalized — liberated from the imperative to profit off our attention indefinitely — a ban may be the most realistic path to reclaiming our lives.

If the author can't stop using whatever website he's upset about without requiring everyone else to have their smartphones banned, that sounds like a him problem.

smartphones are one of rhe hundreds o things that would probably be just fine and good if it weren't for capitalism

All claims and no reasoning.

relevant xkcd

Smartphones make us more social, allowing us to reach each other ad hoc, not just by planning the meeting for a week. They makes us more free by providing helping tools like GPS and similar. They make us happier by helping to kill time while standing in the line or riding on the bus.

You're doing something wrong.

No. If you wanna ditch the Internet, go right ahead.

can we just ban people in general instead?

And then what? Go back to the stone age?

Kids waiting to get picked at school and their parents have emergency, how are they gonna inform the others to get picked up? Are they gonna just let that kid suck it up and wait for hours, just like the good old times?