I really like this style of writing in short bursts, and I appreciate the author's tone and concerns.

I do wonder if the author is very young. As much as I enjoyed his small essay, a few things stuck right out at me:

>I tried having a flip phone once (2014), but you couldn’t find out what time the movies were playing because moviephone just redirected you to their app.

This has been a solved problem for a long time: you look up the movie times and such prior to departing for the movies. No smartphone needed.

>And it’s not like there’s anywhere to go. The real world is strip malls and axe throwing and escape rooms. Oh god people actually go on a hinge date to axe throwing and think it’s the real world.

You can escape, but you'll never hear about it by either checking online, or by listening to very-online people. Go on a hike. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Just go do it. Maybe say hi to some people you meet while you're there. You probably won't develop a deep friendship with them, but you will have a real, face-to-face human interaction.

Living away from the internet can now only be done intentionally. It can be done, though, but it's not the automatic choice. It's not even difficult ... it's just "manual." You must always think about what you want to do and how you want to do it. It's a skill that will come back to you. Or, if the author never learned it, a skill he still has a chance to learn.

What we've lost is getting to feel like you're connected to a common culture. This is a big, big loss, but it is not everything. The tools you need to escape are all around you. Power off your devices. Get some books at your local library. Try leaving your devices off all weekend, even when you get anxious, and bored, and your brain cries out for the easy, automatic stimulation it's become so accustomed to. Lay in bed and stare at the ceiling until your brain creates interesting thoughts out of your boredom. It's possible.

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matltc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well idk if the author is actually geohot but if it is then look him up. Famous hacker from cmu ppp, I think he was first to jailbreak iPhone 4

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everdrive 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ah, sorry, I wasn't familiar with him. Looks like he was born in 1989, and so is not so young. I'm a bit baffled to hear that he doesn't think he can escape his smartphone given that he was resourceful enough to jailbreak an iPhone 4 back in the day. I understand he's speaking poetically and emotionally. Maybe he just means he has the knowledge but not the means.

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eightysixfour 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am a similar age to Geohot and I have tried to escape smartphones to a dumb phone. It didn’t work. So many things that used to work without a smartphone don’t anymore and people don’t realize it.

• Surface parking in my city is all by QR code. Where there are machines, they are broken because no one cares.

• Social groups are on iMessage or RCS. RCS is not nearly as backwards compatible with MMS as it seems and you WILL get dropped silently, eventually.

• Some restaurants literally don’t have print menus (they’re expensive! QR codes are cheap!).

• Rideshare, bike rentals, etc. are all dependent on apps. Taxis are not reliable or available.

The list of tiny cuts goes on and on. When you have a smartphone you don’t realize the affordances that made it possible to be without them are disappearing.

I’m sure you can do it in a smaller place but you have to be dedicated and willing to suffer in a city.

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swiftcoder 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Similar age as well, and damn, if I could actually convince my bank to let me approve transactions with a dumbphone... The reality is just that a significant part of the modern world is contingent on carrying around a brand-name smartphone

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fsflover 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>So many things that used to work without a smartphone don’t anymore and people don’t realize it.

Have you considered using a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone)? There is no dependence on a megacorp and QR codes work fine. Some services might redirect you to a web app if you show them such phone.

	▲	handedness 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		A committed Windows user who just noted they depend on iMessages probably isn't a great prospect for your proselytizing, anyway: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38855086 I've previously tried living out of a PinePhone Pro, and if those web apps require much JS at all they're going to be in for a bad time. By benchmarks and your previous accounts, it sounds like the Librem 5 is only going to be worse from there. But you nod towards a useful point there at the end. I've found I don't need to present ancient hardware to get some entities to provide web apps or other means, I just say something handwavy about my phone being locked down by my employer's IT policy, neglecting to mention that I'm my employer. Bigger orgs aren't worth bothering with, though. You could show an airline an employee a flip phone and they aren't going to have any flexibility on the matter.

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ozozozd 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think he is longing for the “old web” or “small web” as some refer to as these days.

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dgellow 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes it’s geohot’s blog. He’s also active on HN from time to time

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NetMageSCW 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>This has been a solved problem for a long time: you look up the movie times and such prior to departing for the movies. No smartphone needed.

Strangely, not everyone is at home when they decide to go to the movies.

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everdrive 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, I guess our only choice is to own an expensive corporate surveillance device. There's no other option. The ancient polynesians managed to learn to navigate huge, open seas by memorizing the stars. The ancient Greeks managed to measure the size of the sun with trigonometry and grit alone. We've mapped the genome and soon we may even cure inherited illnesses, or bring extinct species back to live.

But I hear you. What if I wanted to know what movies were playing, but I was already at a restaurant? What could I possibly do? The only answer is a smart phone. There's no choice, and no escape.

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Maxatar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You're kind of being a dick now.

	▲	everdrive 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm just so frustrated by how quickly and easily people give in to these things. People face relatively small inconveniences and quickly give away their rights. Smart phones and social media (in large part, enabled by always-on, always-present smart phones) have so, so many negatives effects and people won't even consider moving on. "It's hard to find parking" or "some restaurants are now inconvenient to eat at" are measured next to "the suicide rate of teen girls is spiking" and "we've enabled government tracking and surveillance on a scale never before thought possible." I don't know how else to be. People are so obsessed with immediate impulse satisfaction and immediate comfort that they'd give up anything. I think if you offered to remove someone's right to vote, but told them they would be able to gamble for free once a month you'd lose half the votes in the country.

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bena 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh man, the past was fucking wild, because you would do this. You'd just show up to the theater and look at what was playing. Or, if you were close to a store, you'd go and buy a newspaper that had the movie listings for your local theaters.

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parineum 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It can be it's own "adventure" just to go to the movies and pick something that's playing. You can end up seeing a movie you wouldn't have because you didn't spend 20 minutes reading the negative reviews of and it turns out to be fun.

I discovered a lot of new things by being forced to make choices from limited set of options.

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ambicapter 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He's not very young, he just acts that way.

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jrm4 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So, I'm a college instructor, and sometimes I find myself reading a paper that I dislike -- and as I get into it I'm finding that I'm mentally arguing with the content and the actual argument(s) (as opposed to "quality of writing") and that's when I realize this person should get a good grade.

This is like that for me; he sounds kind of annoying, but as they say, points were made.