01-15-2015, 01:51 AM | #1 |
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Smartphones
Are they a fad, or a permanently integrated part of world culture?
Discuss.
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01-15-2015, 02:00 PM | #2 |
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Worst invention since the nuclear bomb.
I'm baffled as to how low humanity's actually came that we have phones that are capable of doing so much but at the cost of sapping our attentions like a leech. I don't have a smartphone, and even I can tell these machines are not a good thing for people to have. |
01-15-2015, 02:16 PM | #3 | |
Archbishop of Banterbury
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Smartphones in their current form? *shrug*. But some form of combined means of communication and internet access is unlikely to go away any time soon. The trend is always towards more connectivity. Historically speaking things like telegraph, telephone etc don't get abandoned they get supplanted by something that makes communication and access easier or quicker. We've entered an era where most people (in the West at any rate) can access the wealth of information that is the internet on the go any time they like, we're not going to go backwards.
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01-15-2015, 02:58 PM | #4 | |
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01-15-2015, 02:59 PM | #5 | |
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I could also provide the example of dinosaurs like AmericaOnline which appealed very greatly to people who were computer illiterate. Gen Y and the Millennials are significantly more tech savvy and adaptable than the AmericaOnline generation, so once the touchy feely appeal of the iPhone falls out of favour, perhaps they'll fall back on a medium that is merely functional.
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01-15-2015, 04:14 PM | #6 | ||
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We call them smartphones because the easiest way for businesses to get the internet into peoples pockets at first was by bundling it into devices everyone already had (mobile phones) but tbh we've long since reached the stage where they're effectively pocket-sized computers with internet - traditional phone functions of calling and texting are a minor secondary use now. The mobile phone is basically dead in the western world, supplanted by pocket sized tablet computers that happen to also have a phonecall app. Like, the only person I ever text these days is my mum, because for anyone else why would I not Whatsapp or similar when it's superior in every way? Phonecalls barely register as a percentage of the time I use my smartphone.
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01-15-2015, 06:41 PM | #7 |
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I think it's an exaggeration to say the mobile is dead, many avoid linked up social.media culture (and are thus super difficult to pin.down).
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01-15-2015, 06:46 PM | #8 | |
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We're not at the point yet where the smartphone possesses the technology to obsolete traditional computers, and that's why I feel it's a fad.
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01-15-2015, 06:53 PM | #9 | |
Archbishop of Banterbury
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I didn't say it obsoleted traditional computers though, you're missing my point. What mobile phones are to phonecalling in general, smartphones are to internet access in general. The ability to make phone calls on the move is a mobile extension of phone techonology, and isn't going away unless phonecalls go away altogether. The ability to access the internet on the move - ie, smartphones - is a mobile extension of internet access, and isn't going away unless internet access goes away altogether.
Saying that smartphones are a fad is the same as saying the internet is a fad, because what smartphones are is internet access in your pocket. As long as people want internet access, and as long as people want access to communications/information on the move (see also: traditional mobile phones), the smartphone is here to stay. Internet access wherever you are is not a fad.
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Last edited by Concept; 01-15-2015 at 07:08 PM. |
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01-15-2015, 08:09 PM | #10 |
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I agree, but not in practice. Nothing on the internet right now really justifies being plugged in constantly - for purposes of this discussion we could just lazily organize the internet as merely a source of "entertainment" and "communication", with some overlap.
For most people, I don't see how the smartphone acts as any sort of mainstream substitute for other forms of technology that satisfy "entertainment" or "communication". People with full-time jobs work 1/3 of their day. They sleep 1/4 of their day. 7/12 of the day - about 58.3% of that - is devoted to activities almost utterly mutually exclusive with "entertainment" or "communication". The remaining 10.2 hours of the day is divided between transportation and "free time", with at least some of that free time spent at home. If you spend anything more than 1/4 of the time at home not devoted to sleeping - i.e., six hours - the laptop is going to be superior to the smartphone for internet activities. The only way I can imagine the smartphone being useful is during long transportation where someone isn't actively taking part in that transportation. A 2 hour bus commute, I can see the smartphone finding a niche, but that's a niche use, and isn't applicable to the vast majority of people in the United States. I dunno about the UK, although from what I've looked in during that "move to Scotland" I believe driving remains a significant necessity for many workers up there. Now, after the full-time adults you have students, who I think have far more opportunity to use the smartphone. But students before university have similar schedules to full-time adults, but with less transportation time (likely). College students are the only ones more likely to have enough free time and enough potential mobility to make use of the constant internet access, but again just a cross-section of people isn't representative of the total smartphone users today. It could be that in the future, we may see college students who are guilty of what Loki accused me of - i.e., being resistant to change - using smartphones into their work lives, but I just don't see it as practical in that case. Economically speaking, it seems cheaper for me to get a laptop (or a desktop, even), get a flip-phone and use both in their respective niches. The smartphone is also largely incompatible with serious exercise - it's too large and heavy, even if it supports mp3 player support, and risks getting detached and destroyed due to said weight and its own inherent fragility.
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01-16-2015, 01:40 AM | #11 |
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Have you never met humans before?
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01-16-2015, 01:47 AM | #12 |
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No comment on my potentially robotic origins.
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01-16-2015, 03:26 AM | #13 |
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Mate I can tell you right now there are millions of people right now who rely.on smart phones and similar devices to function at work.
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01-16-2015, 04:36 AM | #14 |
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I don't doubt that, but I seriously doubt 40%+ of people would need them to work. The vast majority of people do not gain any significant marginal utility in using a smartphone over the combo of a computer and a mobile phone.
The prevalence of the smartphones so is a product of artificial culture, and if market demand is driven by something as capricious like that, I would expect smartphones to eventually go the way of Hummers.
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01-16-2015, 12:19 PM | #15 |
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The fact the same thing can be achieved with a computer + mobile phone isn't a good reason to consider smartphones a fad, because they aren't supposed to be combining the two completely. The point is that they're supposed to be replacing the mobile phone in the equation simply due to them being able to perform more functions on the go, which some people will find useful for different reasons, whether it's some sort of app it has or the fact you can access and download music on the go. I'm also pretty sure there's a massively larger amount of people using social media than there ever were driving Hummers.
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01-16-2015, 04:33 PM | #16 | |
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Nothing lasts forever. Not even non-fads.
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01-27-2015, 05:08 AM | #17 |
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Smart phones will eventually be replaced with something else in time, but for the foreseeable future I imagine portable devices that make phone calls will remain integrated as part of a small computer of sorts. I just don't see portable phones of any kind going back to being simply a phone at this point. Of course, I could be wrong, but if that does happen it won't be for a very, very long time.
Smart phones are sort of a gift and a curse. Millions of people have access to virtually limitless information at their fingertips at almost any point in time, almost anywhere (or at least limitless until ATT or Verizon tell them they're over their data limit, har har har). That's great, until it becomes and addiction and you go out to dinner with a group of friends and everyone just sits around on their phones instead of socializing. Sadly, I am on of those people from time to time, but it's definitely something I'm not proud of and I have been working on. It needs to become socially unacceptable and considered rude (which it is) for these behaviors before they go away, which may eventually happen, but for the time being that isn't the case. |
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