Can you recall life before the apps?

No problem, still there haven’t fallen into the can’t live without a smart phone bullshit.
Most of the time it seems it’s like a bunch of kids playing with their toys.

I’m 19 years old and proudly iPhoneless. No apps on my phone—it’s used strictly for calling and texting. I was looking for apartments the other day, and I was using an atlas to locate them. Accuweather.com tells me the weather and I look at fliers to find bargains.

Yes, quite well.

I was so against smart phone back in high school when my friends first started getting them and being distracted when in my company. Put down the damn phone and talk with me!

I got one when I went to college and I hate to say it but I fell under the spell too. When I get bored in class I pull out my phone and surf the web. It’s my most hated bad habit. My attention span has actually diminished, a lot.

It is convenient to have a little computer in my pocket at all times but I certainly remember life before it and in some ways it was better. I’m not sure what to do about my “problem” – I can’t just not have a phone in this day and age.

Yes, because I still live it. I only have a flip phone cell. I use the internet from my desktop to get info.

While many of them do make everyday life easier (such as Note taking apps and gps navigation) I remember quite well how I did things without them.

A little pen and paper and a renewal of my AAA membership so I can get maps would be adequate substitutes for the apps I use most often.

And I could learn to live without Pandora radio in my car. Last I heard there are still plenty of local radio stations :)

In other words, I’d just go back to doing things as I did 10 yrs. or so ago. I still remember how. It ain’t that hard really.

I barely know what aps are cuz I’m a fuckin farmer.

I do, and I have the notebooks full of data, calculations, etcetera to prove it.

Now, do you remember life before electricity or running water? Can you recall outhouses, and having a central fireplace for your cooking and home heating? It’s pretty much the same thing. I am sure that the current backlash against smartphones now is similar to the backlash against many other societal evolutions.

When TV could spread information worldwide in real-time, it was demonized as people clung to their newspapers with literally yesterday’s news. And within my lifetime, it was thought that nobody would ever have a use or desire for a computer in their home. only the military and major universities.

Right now, society is changing with technology once again. We did it with the printing press, the telephone… pretty much every major advance in the dissemination of information. And, of course, there will be many who feel that evolution means devolution, and there will be a period of awkwardness (and rudenss) as society adapts to a new way of doing things.

Pretty soon, smartphones will be like indoor plumbing and electric lights; just another fact of life, so seamlessly integrated that we forget there was a time when they didn’t exist.

@jerv I see a lot of it as greed and materialism and that’s what I’m against. I don’t get the reason one needs an iPhone, and iPad, and a laptop. Oh, and perhaps a kindle as well. When some person opens their presents today, they’ll get just another one of these things and it’s as if they’re getting it for materialism, not function. This doesn’t apply to all smartphone users obviously.
This stuff isn’t in my budget anyway. I have a slide phone and a mac laptop (which I got out of a school account), and I’m good with that. A smart phone would definitely be useful to me. Maybe one day I will get one, but as of now I’m doing fine without it.

@jerv I have naught against all that. In fact if all goes well tomorow, I’m getting a tablet. I checked out the display and I don’t understand most of what’s on there. But I know it surfs the net and that’s what I need. I suppose I’ll figure the rest out easily enough.

@jerv until there is no other option, and smart phones are the only choice I will never get one,I have lived just fine without one and will continue to do so.
I look around at the malls, in the publics spaces, and restaurants ,and find people spending time with the company they are NOT with, instead of the company they ARE with.
Not saying the cell phone has it’s place, but it is taking to many people away from the real picture.

But in a way that’s not much different than teens in the 80’s who had their own phones in their bedroom and talked for hours on it, or people sending texts to one another with cells, before smartphones were around.
I do agree that everyone on their smartphones kind of reminds me of zombie movies, but you can do so much more with those than hang around on Facebook.

Christmas Day 20 years ago I was looking at cookbooks and watching the local news for an update about the possibility of a white Christmas.

Yesterday I looked at weather and recipe apps.

Nothing has changed for me.

@dxs Well, iPads are not portable while iPhones have tiny screens, and neither the iPhone nor iPad has the power or versatilty of a laptop, so I get that in the same way that I get people buying screwdrivers and hammers when they already have wrenches; different jobs take different tools. Why you’d need a Kindle if you have an iPad is beyond me though; you can just get the Kindle app on the iPad! It depends on what you’re doing. I find a smartphone about the right size to put on my dash as a GPS or when I need to look something up real quick when I am out and about, while I prefer a tablet for reading (I have a ton of PDF format e-books), and my PC (with 32” monitor, 5.1 surround sound, and actual controls instead of just a touchscreen) for gaming.
Still, you are correct that it’s pricey; enough so that it’s not really worthwhile for those that won’t actually use all of them. Personally, I think many of those with tablets have no need for an actual computer since there are plenty of people who only use their computers to surf the web, check their Facebook, and stream video; all things that a $400 tablet can do just as well as a $700 computer or $2000 Mac. My personal needs are a bit more diverse, so I actually need a few more things than a lot of people, but yes, there are some that get them all just as a sign of materialistic greed.

@SQUEEKY2 I know people that spend no time with people anyways. However, I think that your use of the phrase “spending time with the company they are NOT with” indicates that you aren’t quite ready to accept that the world has changed; that 2014 is different from 1994. Define “with” in light of the fact that we now have communications technologies that were unimaginable even 30 years ago, and that are more ubiquitous than we thought they ever would (or could) be 15 years ago. ¿Entiende la telepresencia?
And that is what I meant about society as a whole being in an awkward stage where we have a new thing that we still haven’t quite figured out what to do with. Just as the law had issues dealing with computer crime because they never before had to deal with cases of theft where the original owner never lost possession of what was stolen, technology is introducing new concepts that we have yet to fully come to terms with.
You are not wrong though; you just see things very differently than I do.

@jonsblond Same stuff, different means, eh? And that is why I see this whole ubiquitous computing thing as just an evolution rather than a full-on upheaval of society. We’re doing the same stuff we always did, only doing it a bit differently.

@jerv I am sure that the current backlash against smartphones now is similar to the backlash against many other societal evolutions.
I am not suggesting a backlash to the point of doing away with Smartphones and their apps. I do think people are getting to rely on them more and more, if that is a bad thing or just another thing like running water, microwaves, and electricity. Time will tell. I was just pondering how people actually did things before they had an app do it for them.

@SQUEEKY2 Not saying the cell phone has it’s place, but it is taking to many people away from the real picture.
There is definitely a difference in a cell phone and a Smartphone. The cell phone I can see has positive applications, you get separated at the mall, some event, around town, and you can call the other person(s) in your party and meet up somewhere instead of fumbling around blindly hoping you run across each other. Maybe it is a help with finding a cheap restaurant near where you are, but it takes away from actually having to learn and remember or exploring and learning. I just notice some people cannot do what seem like simple thing without having to go to their app for help.

W00t, got me a tablet!

^ Sooooooo…....that means we are Skyping now….?