Life without a smartphone or AI

The point is to draw a line between you, a person, and the machines you use to get things done. Many social philosophers peg the release of the iPhone as the beginning of the cyborg era—the widespread adoption of technology that stays on our person, even if it’s not (yet) implanted in our bodies. People smarter than us are even harsher critics, but common sense will get you to the same place.

what happens is what happens when schools ban phones: people start talking to each other again

what else happens

• live in the moment
• consume entertainment with friends and family, not alone
• be aware of where you are on the map and what’s happening around you

dumb phone

notebooks

old-school wrist watches

talk more with people you live with about what everyone is up to

old-school ipod or cd player for going on a walk and listening to music or podcast

GPS: know where you are. paper map on long trips. …but before smartphones, people rarely looked at maps. they learned where they lived and the map lived in their head. nobody called this memorization. it was just what you did. smartphones made us dumb.

Life without smartphones

You can still use a dumb phone. You can still Netflix and chill in front of a monster TV. Desktop and laptop computers? Consoles? Knock yourself out.

Some people think life without smartphones is crazy. other people ask why we don’t badn the entire internet. We think tech policy is the art of the middle ground. Not boiling the ocean. Can’t deny the world as it is.

Broadly, anyone who is willing to give up their cellphone is on the right track. We’re creating the culture by fulling the city with people who agree things have gone too far. We don’t have to—now can we realistically, nor should we—police everything. …And if things get crazy again, like with robots, we’ll have the legal framework in place to ban them.

really worried? here’s an article with easy ways to replace apps [link]