If we take a closer look at our daily lives, our smartphones have become inseparable tools. You only need to step outside to see how the number of people glued to their screens is growing. This raises the question: have smartphones become indispensable tools in our daily lives, or have we become slaves to them?

3 months ago · 👍 bavarianbarbarian, edanosborne, ruby, noice65535, manufacturing_concern, greenaxol35, deerbard, rdlmda

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smartphones have their origins in PDAs from the 90s. they were originally designed to be ASSISTANTS. but when you start putting hooks for non-productivity uses (games, advertisements, etc.) that's when you become a slave to the phone. i'm personally trying to develop a healthier relationship with my smartphone by getting rid of anything that doesn't help me organize my life. · 3 months ago

the real problem is the internet. It's destroying something that is very much deeply ingrained in humans, which is our need for social cohesion and social interation. It's what has allowed our species to survive to this point and it is being devoured by the ersatz "sociality" of the internet thru social media and it's monetization of this deep-seated need for socialization. Even the biggest outsiders and outcasts still yearn for community, as evidenced by the early success of the chan boards and other loser watering holes. The problem, of course, is that what we are getting is the "process cheese" version of community when it is done solely thru telecom networks instead of IRL. · 3 months ago

@bavarianbarbarian but...nobody thought medicine was witchcraft 500 years ago. Especially since all the universities were run by the Church and monastaries were manufacturing medicines going back much earlier than the 16th century in europe. This is silly nonsense, like saying people thought the earth was flat before 1492. · 3 months ago

@ruby like cars, printing books, chemistry, etc... most people fear things they don't understand · 3 months ago

Yes to both! I personally don't use my phone for much of anything other than podcasts and gemini, but when I go out somewhere there are certainly a lot of people glued to theirs, of all ages.

I think I'm with @bavarianbarbarian in that it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a major change to human society and public spaces, but it's just that...a change. · 3 months ago

if smartphones dissapeared today. life would continue just fine, even better. · 3 months ago

i think it's a part of evolution, remember that 500 years ago almost no one could write or read. flying? heretics! medicine? witches! it's an evolving process.. · 3 months ago

I think the people who are glued to them are cyborgs. We just have a poor cultural sense of them where we think they only have mechanical body parts replaced, not our cognitive wetware. When you reach the point of reliance that your social life relies on social media, your mating is regulated through a dating app, and you're using an LLM to navigate all kinds of communication from your job to therapy or tender family moments, I think it's fair to say you have delegated a significant enough amount of congnitive function to a machine to qualify as cyborg. · 3 months ago