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How Long Could You Live Without Your Gadgets?
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jun 14, 2007 07:18 PM
from the life-support-systems dept.
from the life-support-systems dept.
DruCipher writes "CNet.co.uk is running a very funny article about Andrew Lim, the resident mobile phone reviewer, trying to live without all his favorite gadgets. The article sees Andrew try to survive without a mobile phone, a computer, an MP3 player and a TV. At the end of his technology detox he feels more relaxed without all his gadgets but cracks after a few days, 'Like all proper detoxes, though, my zen-like calm didn't last for long. Once I'd finished my gadget starvation, I was straight back to the tech binging. A remote control gun you say? Yes please!'"
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We Need Gadget Belts... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Am I the only one who remember's TechnoBill from Dilbert, who had an amazing array of gadgets in his gadget belt? He then outnerded Dilbert when his fax connected to Dilbert's fax faster than Dilbert could dial his because "Fool, I have autodial". And he had a parabolic dish on a sweatband.
I am?
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Re:Remember - you are not what you own (Score:5, Insightful)
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What this shows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What this shows... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What this shows... (Score:4, Insightful)
What you say is quite true. I've been living in a developing country where there's little or no technology in the rural areas, and I too would be dead already if not for modern medicine. It's amazing what a little infection can do when it goes untreated.
That said, a tech-free lifestyle is extremely healthy, if you can survive it. As evidence, here is a photo of a man [flickr.com] in his late fifties or early sixties, who has lived his entire life without any automation whatsoever. While I'm sure most of us want a physique like that, I don't know how many would be willing to pay the price....
Parent
Re:What this shows... (Score:5, Insightful)
-matthew
Parent
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Well, i think we can safely draw a distinction between high technology like medicine and superfluous personal gadgets like camera phones, iPods, etc. I believe we're talking more about the latter in this thread
-matthew
That distinction is actually a little less clear than you think. The biggest issues affecting the quality of life on this island are poor (i.e. no) health care and very low educational standards. We've been working with members of two villages to try to improve conditions, and in the course of this work identified communications as one of the key criteria in enabling improvements in basic services. Those very devices that seem so superfluous in North America and Europe can actually save lives here.
Let m
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How long? (Score:3, Funny)
Then I get fired for not doing my job.
Re:How long? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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They can have my smartphone, (Score:5, Funny)
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Us poor geeks don't have this problem (Score:2)
Actually, we are not lucky... NEED GADGETS!
Re: Advice to Poor Geeks (Score:4, Insightful)
You can get a humble little MP3 player for $25 or less. You can get a cut rate laptop for $200 that can at least look at a couple web pages and post a blog, and swap tunes from your $25 MP3 player.
If you want a PDA, get one. I have zero use for them, but Your Gadget Enjoyment May Vary. (YGEMV).
The personal cost to being poor is being humble. Take an hour to realize you won't win a SINGLE "your gadget vs. mine" discussion. Then you can just relax and still share the *activities* related to gadget. You can bemoan your latest baseball team's woes
American society includes some social cues that can make it tricky to observe others with money decking themselves out in the best. Just enjoy watching them as "someone showing what can be done". I specialized in books because I was poor for many years. Total cost of an O. Henry/Maupassant/Saki discussion: $25 or less. Total entertainment hours: 25. (If you read each volume twice to compare some details. O. Henry is the most upbeat of the three. The other two might bite.)
Regards,
TaoPhoenix
Parent
Too long ... (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd never be anywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
My G4 Mac hasn't been good enough to play any new games that have come out for over a year, I don't have cable, and my treo has email capability and reasonable web searching capability.
As a bonus, I have all my important music on my Treo SD card.
Everything revolves around my Treo. Soon, it will revolve around my iPhone.
Sadness (Score:5, Funny)
Then my DSL went south. I lost pretty much all connectivity to the Internet. They finally fixed it, but at half the previous speed. It was barely enough for me to serve up my web pages.
My mail server had some problems recently. I had to rebuild the hard drive and drop it back to a backup machine. Had some backups, but was too busy (ok, lazy) to restore. Didn't feel like reconfiguring the webmail frontend in any case. So I started pushing some of the domain up to a hosting facility.
I started using dialup internet because the DSL was just horrid. That wasn't as bad as it sounds, but the hosting site didn't support IMAP, only POP3 because they didn't want to store mail. It was easier to use a command line client in any case.
That worked for a while, but it was still slow. So I had my buddy set up a box with direct modem dial up access. I set up a SLIP connection and could then pull my mail faster. I ditched Pine for the mail utility since it was faster.
But why have SLIP when I could just drop a modem directly to a console? It eliminated about 8% overhead in packet traffic in any case.
Heck, why stop there. I could set up a UUCP connection to another machine and really move mail quickly via serial modem. If I strip HTML attachments and just go with standard mail it'll fly.
Heck, the mail envelope is WAY too much overhead. I should strip that too...
We'll see how it goes...
I wonder if the BIX account is still active?
Question: (Score:5, Funny)
No gadgets, no problem (Score:2)
Re:No gadgets, no problem (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No gadgets, no problem (Score:4, Funny)
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Gadgets don't do much for me (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not to say other people won't find them useful nor that there are a lack of gadgets that are truly useful (GPS navigation is indeed nice) but rather the lack of integration, seamless transparency and/or AI in these gadgets that currently only let the already organized and motivated stay organized. It's not as bad as some truly useless products of the 80s/early 90s I remember my dad having, using for a week, and then letting it sit around for me to discover.
I think google with gmail or Apple with the iPhone are headed finally in the right direction, after all these years. But I have greater hope that a color, high-res E-reader will reduce my bookshelf down to one tablet (next big gadget) than having a truly useful, automated PDA which really fits the bill of being a Personal Digital ASSISTANT rather than me being a slave to it.
Re:Gadgets don't do much for me (Score:5, Funny)
If you ever want to watch a cell phone store salesperson's head blow up... walk in, looking for a cell phone that has two functions, it can make calls, and it can receive calls...
They didn't understand why I thought a crackberry was a threat from my office...
And then I caused true chaos... I tried to pay cash for the phone...
Nephilium
Parent
A few seconds (Score:5, Funny)
I gave up drinkin', smokin', bloggin', and sex... (Score:5, Funny)
Guess which one I do most?
Gadgets? Bah. It's software I'm addicted to. (Score:3, Interesting)
Computer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
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There is. [wikipedia.org]
It's all about context (Score:5, Insightful)
I have in recent times, and in my usual techie world, tried to do without a lot of modern gadgetry. By and large, though, it is hard to simply set aside. I am a practicing engineer doing a lot of mechanical design work - I simply could not do my work without a computer. I call up datasheets and other reference information hourly from the Internet. I do not have a landline, and so rely on my cellphone. I type much faster than I write longhand, so I usually email my long-distance friends and relatives instead of sending letters.
I have made some concessions to toning down my digital life. I don't find cable television to be worth the exhorbitant rates they charge, and broadcast TV is filled with a lot of vacuous crap, so I watch about 2 hours of TV a week. My iPod just died; I am waiting to see how the iPhone pans out, or whether Apple will release a 6th-gen iPod this year. Very few people have my cell #, so I receive about 20 calls per week on it; rarely is anything urgent enough that a landline and answering machine couldn't have handled it.
So, I guess one could say that the context matters in how successfully you can ween yourself from technology. Some lifestyles and work-styles have been enabled by modern gadgetry, and simply couldn't exist without it. In other contexts, the gadgetry is superfluous, a sort of reverse anachronism, if you will.
Depends on where I live (Score:4, Insightful)
You really don't need digg, Slashdot, or the usually IT industry inanity fed intravenously to you 24x7. Like Taleb said his book, Fooled by Randomness [amazon.com], most up-to-the-minute information is just noise.
forever (Score:3, Insightful)
when i go on vacation the first 12 hours i have to adjust to not having news/info instantly available--but after that i'm fine and a good book (or stack of good books) can easilly take the place of internets for leisure.
A worthy project ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have decommissioned my Palm Pilot and MP3 player. I don't answer half the calls I get on my cell phone. I watch less than 1 hour of TV a day, and am thinking of getting rid of it. I run Gentoo on my laptop, but I spend less than five minutes a week administering it, saving any work for major upgrades.
I got to this place by realizing that screwing with this crap is boring. I have better things to do, involving some worthwhile project that will give greater returns in the future. For example, I have continued to improve my motorcycling skills, and have made some long scenic trips, with more planned. And, my work has improved and become less stressful with greater focus.
So find something better to do, perhaps with more depth than a zoetrope or pigeon training
Obviously a success! (Score:5, Funny)
The things you own end up owning you... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a dear subject to me; we have no TV, no car, no microwave, no dishwasher, only one cell phone (my wife needs it for her job), etc. The minimal amount of "gadgets". Since things we own require attention. Requiring attention is not necessarily a bad thing, but you don't chose the time when your hard disk will fail and you'll need to take care of another hardware-related issue.
The main thing left is computers. We have three. I really want to spend less time in front of computers (especially since my day job requires me to be in front of one most of my work time), but the problem (challenge?) is that a lot of my hobbies / dreams / projects are tied to computers. (change computers in the last sentence for your favorite gadget so that I'm not too off-topic
Having no TV (for the last 8 years and we don't miss it at all) makes sure I'm not hypnotized by it, however, computers and Internet (/. anyone?) succeeds in swallowing me way too often...
Ah.... challenges of a life surrounded by gadgetry...
Re:The things you own end up owning you... (Score:5, Insightful)
but what happens when gadgets are the hub of your life? What's the point of starting new hobbies (woodworking?) if my most dear personal projects require gadgets and computers? Have I become a pseudo-slave of gadgets.
It sounds like you've become a slave of NOT having gadgets. Sheesh, the point is to own stuff and not become attached to it, not to just avoid having it in the first place. You can equally become attached to an obsession over not having anything to become attached to.
Parent
I used to do just fine (Score:3, Interesting)
It used to be no problem to memorize stuff. In fact, I was extremely good at it. But now that my computer remembers everything for me, I find that my own memory has gotten very poor. It would probably take quite a while to adapt to not having it.
The only times I've really gone without technology recently were on vacations. It is definitely relaxing, but part of that could be the vacation and place itself, not just freedom from technology. There isn't really much that stressful going on, or a need to memorize much of anything.
No big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I no longer have a TV. I had one for awhile, but found that there are more interesting ways to spend time, like dating women for example. I have ADSL, which is not quite as fast as that 10 gig network I got used to at one point, but it still lets me work effectively from home, and keep up with party invitations. But when I'm up at the island I do completely without, for weeks at a time, until the boat comes to take me back to the mainland.
I have a cell phone, which is handy when I want it, for example when I'm alone on the island running a chainsaw or something, but it usually stays in its charging cradle where it won't intrude on my life. Before cell phones came along I did without that as well. We have a community radiophone down by the dock and in the old days it was either that, when it worked, or wait a day or two for a boat to come along.
I found that degree of isolation scary for the first few years, but also inexpressibly delicious, far more deeply rewarding than playing with some new techno toy. I already get plenty of technology at work, and I approach its use, I suppose, with a certain amount of professional reserve, knowing that nine out of every ten hot new technologies are going to be forgotten within five years anyway.
Want to invest attention in something worthwhile? How about spending time with your friends? Yes, there's more to friendship than showing off your toys.
Until June 29 at 6pm! (Score:5, Funny)
This is an amusing discussion (Score:5, Interesting)
I was homeless for a while. I learned a lot about what was important during those few weeks. I also had piles of bills to pay. I found a job, got a cheap apartment, paid off my bills, got married, went back to school, lived happily ever after, etc. When you've gone through building your life from *nothing*, you simply don't care what comes your way because you already know you can get through *anything* let alone the stupid gadgets.
As a result I tend to focus on things that improve myself, things that can never be taken away no matter what circumstances come my way. I don't play computer games because I see no self improvement there. I *feel* guilty because I'm not getting the most I can out of life. I see computer games as checking out and not facing reality. I've never seen someone become a better person because they played computer games or coveted gadgets. But I've seen things like computer games ruin marriages.
I don't invest in gadgets because they don't tend to produce a better person. Indulging in simple pleasures improves the soul. I'm a developer so I work on computers all day. I administer Linux servers at home and I write code for pleasure. I like these things because they improve my mind and help others.
If I wasn't married, I would throw my cell phone in the nearest gutter. If I didn't need to answer to a family I would stop cable TV because I hardly ever watch it. I would be a teacher in Mathematics and Physics or something if I didn't need to support a house. But I've made compromises because my family and my wife have brought so *much* joy to me. And that's a fair trade.
I think the discussion would have been more meaningful if it was more along the lines of "What compromises have you made in life because of putting resources towards worthless gadgets?" Or how about "Do gadgets take away from enjoying life and getting the most you can out of everyday?"
I love technology for what it can enhance, but I try not to let it *ever* be the focus of my life. It's a tool to accomplish other things like engaging in thoughtful musings on Slashdot. I've learned a lot about other people's thoughts and opinions by reading Slashdot and other such sites. It *enhances* my life because it allows me to hold up my thoughts to the scrutiny of others and allows me to learn more about myself when objective criticism comes my way.
Gadgets should never be a focus. People, family and friends should be the focus. Only gadgets that help those objectives like my cell phone for talking to my wife are worth the hassle.
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