Pros
No one can call or text you to ask you to do stuff for them.
No slack messages.
I never get notifications for likes and DMs whatnot (I mostly had these turned off anyway).
I no longer get to pointlessly swipe on online dating profiles.
No reminders for appointments.
Had to go get my old CD collection to listen to music in the car, listened to music I haven’t listened to in years! BDP, Frank Black, etc. Reminded me to get some more CDs for music that I can’t get on Spotify (NoMeansNo for example),
Cons
I can’t keep in touch with my son and close friends.
Difficult to plan events with people.
Difficult to study Japanese, which I typically do three times a day.
Can’t study Kanji at all on Duolingo on the laptop computer. Have to use an old pen and paper method which is fine but it misses out on some of the nuances of stroke order which I get better with Duolingo.
I never know what time it is.
Can’t just casually listen to podcasts. Have to be super deliberate about it and get my earbuds on and fire up spotify on the laptop.
Can’t easily listen to music while cooking.
Can’t listen to noise when I’m trying to get to sleep.
Can’t listen to stuff in the car, unless it’s on the radio or on CD. These four things are technically the same but they have a different role in my life.
Can’t take any pictures without busting out my old digital camera.
Can’t check my bank balance easily.
Can’t look things up quickly, need to go get a laptop.
No reminders for appointments.
Believe it or not, my phone is also my remote control. So, right now I can’t easily watch programming that I could before on my TV. I have to open the laptop and cast it to the TV and many many many web sites suck ass at doing that, specifically Peacock.
Every 2FA login right now is either broken or crippled.
Now whenever I have to wait somewhere for anything I can’t just whip out my phone and ignore the world. Instead I have to stand there in line like a total creep and either keep my head up and watch people buy 2lbs of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter or stare at the ground like I was trained to never do!
Navigation. How on earth did we ever find anything before? You mean people busted out paper maps? Thomas guides? Mapquest? Holy shit.
Great post!
Many words have been devoted to necessity and ubiquity of the pocket computers we call “phones”, but yours are a worthy addition to what has gone before.
The psychology of the whole thing is not noticed enough. I love to ignore my phone when I want to, but I HAVE to have the phone in possession in order to ignore it.
Not having it causes all kinds of anxiety that rivals being a neurotic Gooner. I bought my current phone in February 2021 and it’s still overkill for what I need. I can download tablature really fast, but my fingers still struggle to avoid typos as they on my iPhone 3GS.
I don’t need extra picks, I don’t need extra strings, sometimes I don’t need my actual guitar over my phone.
Welcome to 2023-2024.
“but my fingers still struggle to avoid typos as they on my iPhone 3GS.“
Not sure if this was intentional, but, if so, very well played 1Nil.
The MFA stuff is a challenge. Using phones for that is a good option to improve security in general, but it does mean that you’re screwed on all those sign-in/transactional things if you don’t have your phone.
Things will be much easier when the Soros/Gates implanted RFID chips can handle that ;-).