Dumbphone dilemma
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It's no news for long time readers of this phlog (which, goodness, is
almost a year old now!) that I'm not a fan of smartphones. The long
list of evils that I attribute to them includes, but is probably not
limited to:
* Devices with cameras, microphones and GPS receivers which are
always on one's person and always connected to the internet and
are powered by closed-source software are ideal surveillance
devices and will *inevitably* be used as such at least some times
by both state and commercial entities.
* The walled garden "app store" paradigm gives computing device
manufacturers an historically unprecedented level of control over
the software that runs on those devices and introduces an
historically unprecedented barrier toward development. Many
people's primary computing device is now one that they have almost
no hope of being able to program.
* The rapid release of new phone models, the huge marketing hype
surrounding new releases and the excessive social cachet that
comes from having the latest phone leads to people upgrading every
year or two, even though their phone still works fine, which is
tremendously wasteful and contributes to a ballooning e-waste
problem.
* Having an eternally internet connected device always within reach
facilitates a kind of endlessly distracted headspace which is
terrible for your attention span and your social well-being, and
even if you are aware of this it's hard to resist it with will
power alone because software for the devices is actually
engineered deliberately to induce precisely this state of mind.
* The user experience in generally is actually just pretty bad.
Battery life sucks, typing on a touchscreen *really* sucks, the
things often get unfomortably warm if you put them under load.
But, of course, I cannot deny that the things can be convenient,
sometimes tremendously so. So I do use one, but I'm very particular
about it. Aside from my first, 7 or 8 years ago now, I have never
actually bought a smartphone. A nice side-effect of the endless
high speed release of slightly improved devices mentioned above is
that you *always* have a close friend or family memeber who has just
upgraded and whose old phone is now useless to them, so you can just
survive off their cast-offs. Whenever I get a new phone I
immediately flash it with Cyanogenmod or, nowadays, LineageOS, even
though this always, on every device I have ever tried, has huge
negative consequences for the performance of the GPS chip, for
reasons I cannot fathom. I only install stuff from F-Droid, and
never put any Google software on there or link it to a Gmail
account, even though this eliminates a lot of convenient uses
because institutions like banks or cities never publish APK files
for their apps, instead relying on Google's walled garden, so I
can't, e.g. use my phone to buy a bus ticket in Helsinki and have
to seek out a paper ticket vending machine like some kind of
caveperson.
So I am an embittered, reluctant smartphone user at best. When I
reread Bruce Sterling so clearly pointing them out as the
fundamental vehicle by which the Internet of Things will be
imposed upon us whether we want it or not, just like
electrification was previously, I felt the stirrings of the desire
to reject them outright and proudly.
It's long kind of bothered me that almost nobody does this. I've
alluded previously to the fact that, up until about a year ago, I
felt pretty negative about technology and the internet because I
felt like plenty of people were aware of the many massive problems
but nobody seemed to have the kind of principled committment
required to stop using the problematic elements (well, except, as
always, Stallman-sama). Even hardcore privacy advocates, tor
developers and people like that all had smartphones and Twitter
accounts. I listened to an intereview with Bruce Schneier, who I
have long trusted and admired, with one of the people behind the
"Technoskeptic" podcast[1]. After talking about all the problems
with smartphones, Bruce baldly asserts that we can't just *not*
own a smartphone if we're unhappy with this, as if it were
physically impossible to survive without one. The host of the
interview immediately replies that in fact, he *doesn't* have a
smartphone, completely demolishing Bruce's claim, and Bruce
simply *ignored* the guy and went on with his pre-planned line.
I'm really disappointed that he didn't take the opportunity to
actually talk to the guy about this option.
So I wondered about biting the bullet and trying the allegedly
impossible. I did some research and I could quite cheaply (about
EUR35) get a nice Nokia "dumbphone" (the 150) which would suit
my needs quite well, which mainly means that it can do calls,
SMS and play mp3s from an SD card. This covers everything
important I actually have to do day-to-day, and would let me
relegate my smartphone to travel-only use, when the GPS,
translation and other such functions really are tremendously
useful. Heck, I'm even very excited to learn that apparently
the SD card in this phone will show up as a USB mass storage
device if I plug it into my computer. This is an absolute killer
feature for me, as sad as that sounds. This used to be totally
standard behaviour, then for some reason, both it and expandable
SD card storage became as rare and hens teeth. My enjoyment of
my phone plumetted immediately once getting files to/from it
involved anything more complicated than just plugging it into
my computer and mounting it and then using perfectly standard
tools.
The only thing that's really holding me back is the simple fact
that if I went ahead with this place I'd be buying a new
electronic device, powered by a custom LiPo battery and therefore
destined to be landfill, more to make a philosophical point than
anything else, and I don't really feel comfortable with that. I
take the stewardship of the things I buy pretty seriously and
newly manufactured computing devices come with an especially
heavy sense of responsibility. Buying one not to fulfill an
actual need but just to make me feel better about myself is a
dubious proposition.
This is a special case of a much more general problem. When you
decide to change your lifestyle to make it more minimalistic or
sustainable or whatever, if you're not careful it's surprisingly
easy to turn the initial energy of this undertaking into an
episode of buying new stuff to replace old stuff you already have
and which works just fine, simply because you want to own more
minimsliastic or sustainable versions of what you already have.
This is an easy trap to fall into but it can totally defeat the
purpose of your new resolutions. It almost always makes more
sense to stick with what you already have. I've invested quite
a lot of time and effort in minimising the amount of harm that
my smartphone can do to me, perhaps I should be satisfied with
that and not buy a new device I don't really need just to
prove a point?
[1]
https://thetechnoskeptic.com/podcast002/
