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20130131

phone-related commercials + rant

First, there's the Sprint Unlimited commercial.  They feed you lines about how human experience is spectacular, and why would you cap that?  Your phone can capture the entire gallery of humanity, the narrator says, and he needs to upload all of it.  Then he says "I have the need--no, I have the right to be unlimited."

No, actually, you don't have the right to an unlimited cell phone plan.   You aren't entitled to anything when it comes to that type of discretionary technology.  You don't even have the right to read technical papers that your tax payer money has funded.  And it's great that your phone can capture everything (which I'm not so sure about, but let's run with it), however, unless you're working on a documentary, you should probably live your life rather than record it all.

Then, we have the Droid DNA ad, showing a man's blood, DNA, and neurons being taken over by his cell phone.  It culminates in the line: "It's not an upgrade to your phone, it's an upgrade to yourself."

No, no, it's not.  Frankly, being obsessed with using your phone might downgrade you as a person.  My question is: why is texting or browsing the web in the social context even okay to begin with?  You wouldn't take a non-urgent phone call in the middle of a conversation with another person, nor would you open up a newspaper in the middle of a class.  Why are people so rude?

Etiquette aside, why are we obsessed with the online world?  Why do people have the patience to use Pinterest regularly?  How do people the have the endurance to tweet or check for Facebook updates continually?  To me, so much of it feels like noise that's getting in the way of the things that I really care about.

I love the internet.  I love being able to look things up, sync my files, and blog.  But I have no desire to be constantly plugged into the online world. I have no desire for a smartphone. I love making things more than reading about making things. I love working uninterrupted. I love paper maps, even though I can get terribly lost. Getting lost is half the fun.

So while the age threshold for people with nicer phones than me drops into the tweens, I'm declaring my right to limit myself.  I don't need unlimited online access, and I'm more productive, learn more, and am more engaged with the world without it.

6 comments:

Jeff Kaufman said...

"why is texting or browsing the web in the social context even okay to begin with? You wouldn't take a non-urgent phone call in the middle of a conversation with another person, nor would you open up a newspaper in the middle of a class. Why are people so rude?"

I see a continuum of rudeness (roughly ordered):

a) while you are talking to someone, they get out their phone and start playing a game, reading, etc

b) while you are talking to someone they get out their phone in response to a notification, and respond to it.

c) while you are talking to a group, some members get out their phones and start playing etc

d) while you are talking to someone they get out their phone in response to a notification and then quickly put it away, apologizing.

e) after a disagreement over a fact someone gets out their phone to look it up, dropping out of the conversation until they have something to share.

f) someone receives a notification but you don't notice because they wait until their current conversation is complete to answer.

g) after a disagreement over a fact everyone huddles around the phone while someone looks it up.

These are the main uses I see. I don't think phone etiquette is that well established yet, and won't settle until the technology slows down, but I think (a) is pretty clearly rude while (f) and (g) are pretty much fine. (d) and (e) I think of as marginal. How do you think of them?

"I love paper maps, even though I can get terribly lost. Getting lost is half the fun."

I have more fun with this now that I have a phone with gps. I can now follow my nose and go where I want, but know that if it doesn't work out I can easily fall back on the phone.

But most of the time, the main thing I like is that before I go somewhere I no longer need to spend a long time figuring out directions. I just make sure I have the address and I leave.

"I have no desire for a smartphone"

For a long time I didn't think phones were worth it, but now that I have one I'm pretty happy I have it. I think the main change was phones becoming more capable. Nearly everything I use it for I could instead use a specialized tool (a notepad, a camera, a flashlight, gps, cell phone, e-reader, ...) but none of those were enough worth it to buy, or carry with me, on their own.

ajbc said...

Of course there is a continuum of rudeness, but I think we need to tease out two facets: the actual technological action, and the social action/attitude. In (d), the technological action is responding to a notification, but the social action is an apology. In (a), the technological action is playing a game, and the implied social action is ignoring the other person. In the list you made, the two are kind of jumbled. Blatantly ignoring other people is never okay. Dropping out without saying or gesturing anything is also fairly rude. Asking permission to check a message or look up a fact is usually polite.

That aside, I agree that (f) and (g) both seem fine. I think (e) is more awkward than anything else, and I would perceive (d) as rude unless they have a valid excuse for urgency. (I'll often conjure up my own excuses for people.)


"For a long time I didn't think phones were worth it, but now that I have one I'm pretty happy I have it. I think the main change was phones becoming more capable. Nearly everything I use it for I could instead use a specialized tool (a notepad, a camera, a flashlight, gps, cell phone, e-reader, ...) but none of those were enough worth it to buy, or carry with me, on their own."

You've shared this lots-of-things-in-one mentality before, but I still don't buy it for myself. Any cell phone you get now has a camera and can be used as a flashlight. So, I carry any old-school cell phone and a tiny notebook; the only things I'm missing from your list are gps and e-reader. Perhaps my carry-space is less limited since I use a purse, but I also like being able to use my notebook in contexts where phones are not allowed, e.g., on airplanes and in concerts.

As for GPS, I basically never get lost when I'm on foot or on my bike--it's only when I drive. So, if I really needed it, I could get something for the car. Since both N and I drive our one car, this would make more sense than both of us getting smartphones. Even still, while GPS can be useful, I find that I get to know an area much better by getting myself un-lost with maps. In the end, this is just a matter of personal priorities: time or knowledge.

I am thinking of getting an e-reader, but one advantage I see to having a separate device is battery life. My cell phone is my help line for emergencies; I don't want to wear down its battery by reading books. Also, most of the reading I do is at home or while walking outside. For reading at home, the all-in-one doesn't matter. For reading outside, it's important to have a screen that deals with sunlight well.

With the lots-of-things-in-one mentality, you get lots of lower quality items in one expensive device. I'm willing to carry a little more weight to get exactly what I want.

Jeff Kaufman said...

"actual technological action, and the social action/attitude"

I'm not sure dividing actions into social and technological makes sense. It sounds like you're dividing up "things you do with your phone or computer" and "other things you do". Speaking to someone, calling someone, texting someone, sending an email, writing a letter, and leaving a note are all a mix of some communicative technology and some social effects.

I agree that separating out the social interpretation from the action is useful, though, (and maybe the previous paragraph is me misunderstanding your division).

"lower quality items in one expensive device"

A low-quality tool I have with me beats a high quality one I don't buy or don't keep with me. Today I was in a music store with my cousin to buy a jaw-harp. They weren't labeled by key, and the music store person didn't know which was which. My phone has a tuner (and if it didn't have one I could install one at the time) and I could find that the jaw harp was in G and then we could decide whether to buy it.

ajbc said...

In response to your first two paragraphs: I was trying to determine the distinction between the following two cases:
(1) while you are talking to someone they get out their phone in response to a notification and then quickly put it away.
(2) while you are talking to someone they get out their phone in response to a notification and then quickly put it away, apologizing.

There, the only difference is the social action (apologizing) or lack thereof paired with the technological action (checking the phone). However, the technological actions themselves can be social actions, as you pointed out, so perhaps the distinction isn't as meaningful as I originally thought.

Maybe there are three categories: technological actions that are always rude in a social context, technological actions whose rudeness in a social context is mitigated by social action (e.g., asking for permission or apologizing), and technological actions in which people engage together. Thoughts?


"A low-quality tool I have with me beats a high quality one I don't buy or don't keep with me."

Agreed. I'm not saying smartphones aren't useful, nor that other people shouldn't want or enjoy them. I just know that for me personally, it's not the right choice right now.

It's interesting to me that when I express this, people often react by trying to convince me that smartphones are useful or that I should get one. Expressing the opposite opinion is perfectly valid, but the responses I receive sometimes (not from you, Jeff) make me worry that technological restraint is occasionally viewed negatively or as laughable. I don't want to live in a society in which I am expected to constantly accessible via some kind of electronic messaging, but at the risk of sounding like a dystopian worry-wart, it seems like that's where we are headed.

Jeff Kaufman said...

"Maybe there are three categories: technological actions that are always rude in a social context, technological actions whose rudeness in a social context is mitigated by social action (e.g., asking for permission or apologizing), and technological actions in which people engage together."

In my model, an individual action (reading news on a paper or a phone) is totally fine in some contexts (riding the bus with strangers) and rude in others (while having a two-person conversation). Asking permission or apologizing can change the social context to make something more acceptable.

One interesting example to look at is a pager. Some jobs require being on-call. If someone gets on-call notifications via a stand-alone waist-mounted beeper then when it makes noise people know that it's about being on-call. While if someone gets notifications via their phone then people around them can't tell if they're responding to a page or just checking texts. Perhaps they themself don't know until they check.

Another case where we've segmented tech is with texting vs email. My phone can get both texts and email, and I can respond to both, but it's set to vibrate on texts while I only check email when I notice it. The texts I get are from a small number of people and usually are for time-sensitive questions, while emails are much less often important. More segmentation would be nice here, but you can't generally rely on senders to decide on urgency levels for you.

"people often react by trying to convince me that smartphones are useful or that I should get one"

I think that's because a lot of people have gained one in the past few years, so they remember not having one and can compare that to now. If they're happy having made the transition they want you to enjoy that too.

"I don't want to live in a society in which I am expected to constantly accessible via some kind of electronic messaging, but at the risk of sounding like a dystopian worry-wart, it seems like that's where we are headed."

I think you're probably right that's where we're heading. I think in ten years the expectation will be that if someone close to you needs to ask you an urgent question that they can send a message you'll respond to right away. I also think we'll have better filtering by then, so that you can easily check your messages in a batch when you have free time. I think we'll switch more from voice to text, which I like in that it enables better filtering.

"I basically never get lost when I'm on foot or on my bike--it's only when I drive"

For me, as someone who spends a lot of time on foot and on public transit, I find being able to look up directions, schedules, and real-time status really helpful. It's not usually about getting unlost but about quickly finding out whether I should go one way or another. If mostly drove this would matter less.

"My cell phone is my help line for emergencies; I don't want to wear down its battery by reading books"

Coming from not having any phone I don't think of mine as an emergency device. It's been helpful in emergencies, and I try not to let its battery run out during the day by using it too much, but I don't worry about it.

ajbc said...

"I think in ten years the expectation will be that if someone close to you needs to ask you an urgent question that they can send a message you'll respond to right away."

I don't like this paradigm because, as you said yourself, senders are really bad at determining the urgency of a message. On top of that, urgent doesn't mean important (unless that's what you originally meant by urgent). I've been called by a friend asking which grocery store isle should contain bran, as in for bran muffins. That's urgent but not important. I really don't want to be flooded by urgent but unimportant messages.

"I also think we'll have better filtering by then, so that you can easily check your messages in a batch when you have free time."

I'd like to think so too, but this kind of filtering might be really personal, and so it comes with two major issues: training the filters for each user and keeping the filters secure. The first step would be to get training data. We could take the spam-filter approach and have users label messages as urgent or non-urgent--anything else would be too complicated in terms of UI, at least initially. However, users are more likely to forget to label urgent messages, since they'd probably be dealing with the message itself. Using raw response times would probably not be the best approach, since it would up-weigh easily dealt with messages, but it might be worth incorporating. I'm going to mull this whole problem over, since it's related to my research interests. If you or anyone else is interested in brainstorming on this, email might be a better forum.


On phones and travel--I first got a phone when I got my driver's license, and I view its primary purpose as a way to call 911 or AAA. Although I drive very little now, the only transit for which I would need to look up schedules are either very regular or have electronic signs with updates. If I took buses more often, I could see how getting updates would be a huge boon.