This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
Part of me wonders if things are like this because the masses have been trained to see their abuse as a good thing, in a similar way to how the american worker sees themselves not as exploited but as a temporarily restrained exploiter
The article (with its doom-scrolling) suggests some stats phones should have:
Dismissing a notification ...... 22%
Intentional use ................ 20%
Checking something that pinged . 18%
Replying to a person ........... 15%
Updating/configuring/fixing .... 12%
Unlocking, forgetting why ...... 8%
Managing a subscription ........ 5%
That would be kind of cool.
The real headache is that everything with a network connection needs system administration.
> This watch costs twelve dollars. It weighs twenty-one grams.
> This watch costs four hundred dollars. It also tells time.
> It also tracks my steps, monitors my blood oxygen, measures my sleep quality, logs my workouts, reminds me to breathe, reminds me to stand,
I had quite opposite experince with casio. If I want water proof (like swimming) watches, I would have to buy bulky and super expensive gshock with GPS and tons of useless festures.
$20 chinese smart watch are completely water sealed, tiny and simple to use. I can even remove wrist band, to make them even smaller. Only downside is battery life is only one week.
Loved this. A lot of what's kept me sane (and what my wife is now trying to learn from me) is how absolutely merciless I am on notifications. Every time an app buzzes me, it damn well better be information I want, and if it isn't, I change the settings or revoke notifications altogether. If I am not shopping, I do not care how good your deals are. If I am not bored, I don't care what the Anxiety Machine has found to show me.
My devices serve me, not the shareholders of their respective firms.
I love this. Maybe it's because I've always subconsciously realised this (I do prefer my flip phone and my iPhone stays in a drawer at home) but I've never seen something put words to my thoughts more accurately than this has
I'm getting into woodwork. I just bought a vice made in the 1940s, the same one my grandfather used. It's finished. As are my chisels, and my cast iron cookware. It's definitely refreshing.
Oh my god this site is so cool. I just want to say — how much time did you pour into the typography and animations on the frontend? I absolutely love it.
Every paragraph has its own form — you clearly thought about how each piece should be presented, where to expand, where to pull back, where to hit hard. I couldn't stop scrolling. You're an artist! AI might help style every line of text, but it sure as hell can't craft a reading experience like this.
My smart watch has become an invaluable digital prosthetic to help me backfill cognitive challenges that I’ve learned are related to ADHD.
“It dings all the time!” Yes, exactly, having a buzzer attached to my person at all times ensures I don’t miss appointments and that I leave to things on time.
Your thermostat that bothers you? It would be great if we lived in a world where energy was free, and there were no consequences for using as much energy as you want. That’s not the world we live in. And you probably don’t want to live in a world where the power company decides when you can and can’t turn on your AC. This is the compromise. I’m sorry you’re bothered by it — the consequences of other solutions to this problem are likely much worse.
It’s easy to forget that these things exist, and people buy them, to solve real problems. But writing a whole essay and just eliding that fact strikes me as lazy.
The larger point of the article is that these new devices are dependent on your continued labor to keep them running usefully. Moreover, this is a choice in how they're designed.
The article isn't saying they don't do other things, it's just not relevant.
I agree to an extent. I also have ADHD and find these things useful, but the tradeoff is that to be effective they always have to be important in a way a cell phone or smart watch is very bad at guaranteeing since their main customer isn't the consumer but the advertising firm. I wish bespoke PDAs were still a thing (or at least, an easily accessible thing)
This post says, “22% dismiss notifications”. Why do people allow this? I see people with phones that have 3 new notifications per 5 minutes and none of them are human being messages or human being event reminders.
Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you. The news isn’t actionable. Stop letting the news task you. Your social feeds aren’t actionable. Stop letting your feeds task you.
(And, yes, I’ll concede that Duo push is valid, because either I initiated that, or I have a problem to solve. Being employed brings some of us joy, after all!)
Notifications are not meant to fill the silences in your life. Your thoughts are. Not all the random drivel that phones opportunistically shovel into our faces.
I don’t really like this post because it rabble-rouses rather than owning up to the major failure of the author up top. Maybe it’ll help someone regardless, but it could have been a lot more direct with no less effectiveness. Missed opportunity, I suppose.
Kinda but one-time disabling of notifications on a new app is setting the time on your Casio watch a couple of times a year. Do it once (or very infrequently) and you’re done.
This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
Part of me wonders if things are like this because the masses have been trained to see their abuse as a good thing, in a similar way to how the american worker sees themselves not as exploited but as a temporarily restrained exploiter
[delayed]
The article (with its doom-scrolling) suggests some stats phones should have:
That would be kind of cool.
The real headache is that everything with a network connection needs system administration.
You can turn off the doom scrolling!
There's a great essay hiding in that page, but oh my goodness that is a frustrating format and layout.
Link at top...
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing/ascii
Sorry, I try to keep both camps in mind as I build these things. There's a text version linked at the top, but the link is here: https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing/ascii
Funny story, but I didn't realise I much I didn't want an Apple Watch, until I got one. I exercise daily and most days I just want it to shut up.
> This watch costs twelve dollars. It weighs twenty-one grams.
> This watch costs four hundred dollars. It also tells time. > It also tracks my steps, monitors my blood oxygen, measures my sleep quality, logs my workouts, reminds me to breathe, reminds me to stand,
I had quite opposite experince with casio. If I want water proof (like swimming) watches, I would have to buy bulky and super expensive gshock with GPS and tons of useless festures.
$20 chinese smart watch are completely water sealed, tiny and simple to use. I can even remove wrist band, to make them even smaller. Only downside is battery life is only one week.
Loved this. A lot of what's kept me sane (and what my wife is now trying to learn from me) is how absolutely merciless I am on notifications. Every time an app buzzes me, it damn well better be information I want, and if it isn't, I change the settings or revoke notifications altogether. If I am not shopping, I do not care how good your deals are. If I am not bored, I don't care what the Anxiety Machine has found to show me.
My devices serve me, not the shareholders of their respective firms.
I love this. Maybe it's because I've always subconsciously realised this (I do prefer my flip phone and my iPhone stays in a drawer at home) but I've never seen something put words to my thoughts more accurately than this has
I liked this, reminds me of some other discussion on recycling/global warming etc being pushed as the comsumers fault
Ironically, casio, the company behind the prime example is now doing these kinds of things: https://www.casio.com/us/moflin/
Some of these fonts and transitions I like a lot, but sometimes it feels like there are a few too many fonts on screen.
It has a plaintext version which I appreciate (though I wish it were actual plaintext instead off formatted html with the aesthetics of plaintext)
I'm getting into woodwork. I just bought a vice made in the 1940s, the same one my grandfather used. It's finished. As are my chisels, and my cast iron cookware. It's definitely refreshing.
Oh my god this site is so cool. I just want to say — how much time did you pour into the typography and animations on the frontend? I absolutely love it.
Every paragraph has its own form — you clearly thought about how each piece should be presented, where to expand, where to pull back, where to hit hard. I couldn't stop scrolling. You're an artist! AI might help style every line of text, but it sure as hell can't craft a reading experience like this.
My smart watch has become an invaluable digital prosthetic to help me backfill cognitive challenges that I’ve learned are related to ADHD.
“It dings all the time!” Yes, exactly, having a buzzer attached to my person at all times ensures I don’t miss appointments and that I leave to things on time.
Your thermostat that bothers you? It would be great if we lived in a world where energy was free, and there were no consequences for using as much energy as you want. That’s not the world we live in. And you probably don’t want to live in a world where the power company decides when you can and can’t turn on your AC. This is the compromise. I’m sorry you’re bothered by it — the consequences of other solutions to this problem are likely much worse.
It’s easy to forget that these things exist, and people buy them, to solve real problems. But writing a whole essay and just eliding that fact strikes me as lazy.
For the record, I also have ADHD and I find the opposite impact on my psyche.
The larger point of the article is that these new devices are dependent on your continued labor to keep them running usefully. Moreover, this is a choice in how they're designed.
The article isn't saying they don't do other things, it's just not relevant.
I agree to an extent. I also have ADHD and find these things useful, but the tradeoff is that to be effective they always have to be important in a way a cell phone or smart watch is very bad at guaranteeing since their main customer isn't the consumer but the advertising firm. I wish bespoke PDAs were still a thing (or at least, an easily accessible thing)
This post says, “22% dismiss notifications”. Why do people allow this? I see people with phones that have 3 new notifications per 5 minutes and none of them are human being messages or human being event reminders.
Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you. The news isn’t actionable. Stop letting the news task you. Your social feeds aren’t actionable. Stop letting your feeds task you.
(And, yes, I’ll concede that Duo push is valid, because either I initiated that, or I have a problem to solve. Being employed brings some of us joy, after all!)
Notifications are not meant to fill the silences in your life. Your thoughts are. Not all the random drivel that phones opportunistically shovel into our faces.
I don’t really like this post because it rabble-rouses rather than owning up to the major failure of the author up top. Maybe it’ll help someone regardless, but it could have been a lot more direct with no less effectiveness. Missed opportunity, I suppose.
Managing these notifications (which are on by default most of the time) is a form of what I'm writing at here, isn't it?
Kinda but one-time disabling of notifications on a new app is setting the time on your Casio watch a couple of times a year. Do it once (or very infrequently) and you’re done.
Mine is a Timex Ironman :)
Ha. Ha. Ha. He expects to still find a battery fit for the Casio watch 7 years from now! Good luck with that buddy!
Essay author here - they're readily available! It's just a CR2016.
ref: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Casio+F-91W+Battery+Replacement...
Just a humorous jab :)