>Are there young people out there who think modern pocket computing is just plain wrong?
In high school I was the only cell phone holdout.[0] I finally got one at the very very tail end of my senior year. (Like, a week away from graduation.) What ultimately changed my mind was:
1. I was tired of not being able to keep track of friends or access the (frankly really friggen cool) telepathic communication network we call SMS.
2. Realistically, yes the NSA is tracking you and they know wherever you are. On the other hand, so do emergency medical professionals and your parents and anybody else you might want who is now just a convenient phone call away. This has saved me from a night of being homeless in a large city more than once. Mundane emergencies turn out to be a way bigger deal than passive government surveillance.
3. Having the web wherever you go really is like magic. Yes yes I know you've gotten used to google and being able to look things up but it takes on a whole new dimension once you can do it anywhere at any time.
That having been said, I'm still not on Facebook. I have no plans to ever be on Facebook. I'm still not on any of the 'big' social media services like snapchat or instagram. I only really use SMS, I don't play mobile games, and I think the addictive little helper most people seem to have created in their pocket is really disturbing and implies a really painful social backlash that's going to come against the people who put this stuff in the environment.
It's increasingly clear to me that smartphones are comparable in their addiction risk to pharmaceuticals, and we're going to see a huge PR hit against tech companies when this becomes the consensus view:
In high school I was the only cell phone holdout.[0] I finally got one at the very very tail end of my senior year. (Like, a week away from graduation.) What ultimately changed my mind was:
1. I was tired of not being able to keep track of friends or access the (frankly really friggen cool) telepathic communication network we call SMS.
2. Realistically, yes the NSA is tracking you and they know wherever you are. On the other hand, so do emergency medical professionals and your parents and anybody else you might want who is now just a convenient phone call away. This has saved me from a night of being homeless in a large city more than once. Mundane emergencies turn out to be a way bigger deal than passive government surveillance.
3. Having the web wherever you go really is like magic. Yes yes I know you've gotten used to google and being able to look things up but it takes on a whole new dimension once you can do it anywhere at any time.
That having been said, I'm still not on Facebook. I have no plans to ever be on Facebook. I'm still not on any of the 'big' social media services like snapchat or instagram. I only really use SMS, I don't play mobile games, and I think the addictive little helper most people seem to have created in their pocket is really disturbing and implies a really painful social backlash that's going to come against the people who put this stuff in the environment.
It's increasingly clear to me that smartphones are comparable in their addiction risk to pharmaceuticals, and we're going to see a huge PR hit against tech companies when this becomes the consensus view:
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technolog...
[0]: I'm currently 20, FWIW.