Nearly Half of American Adults Are Smartphone Owners 267
First time accepted submitter saiful76 writes "Nearly half (46%) of American adults are smartphone owners as of February 2012, an increase of 11 percentage points over the 35% of Americans who owned a smartphone last May. Two in five adults (41%) own a cell phone that is not a smartphone, meaning that smartphone owners are now more prevalent within the overall population than owners of more basic mobile phones."
Rots your brain (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can't speak for other people, but it trips me out to be walking through the supermarket chatting online. My inner ten-year-old is so happy. Other than that, I like using it as a music player on trips, an audiobook player, an ebook reader and a geocaching toy,
Work? (Score:2)
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> ...the only reason I can see for having a smartphone
> is for keeping yourself entertained on the go.
Yup. You can play Angry Birds while taking a dump in the bathroom. Now *THAT* is "keeping yourself entertained on the go".
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And sundials, a crutch for those with a stunted sense of the time of year and ability to judge the position of the sun.
And depending on one's observations of the solar cycle, a crutch for those not well enough in tune with their own circadian rhythm.
And maps, for those with a stunted sense of being able to predict where one will be in the future, and failing to prepare by memorizing maps of the area.
And the internet, just a crutch for those who haven't properly prepared their activities - you should always
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Oh, I totally agree with you that those are still good and useful things to do.
It's simply a tool, a tool which will improve over time. It's not a cure all, nothing ever is. It can fail, and awareness of your surroundings and common sense are still good things - and always will be. That's no reason to deny the benefits of the tool and decry the users of it.
You missed the point (Score:2)
His point was to illustrate that smartphones aren't "crutches", they're tools, and the only ones labelling them crutches are luddites who don't understand the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. If he wants to go back to memorizing Rolodexes he can be my guest. I'm loving the fact that I don't even have to ASK people's phone number half the time anymore, since they post it on Facebook, and it automatically updates to my phone. This frees up brain cells which can be more productively used for other things.
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The reason I used the word "crutch" is that at this point of the technology, it can still be knocked out f
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If he wants to go back to memorizing Rolodexes he can be my guest.
No one memorized their Rolodex. They had a Rolodex for that. They also had this neat thing called an address book for taking that data with them on the go.
Those things had amazing battery life (they never needed charging), the most intuitive UI ever, and a great display that actually looked better in bright sunlight. As a bonus, they could survive countless falls on to concrete from astonishing heights.
If that's not enough, while today's smartphones struggle with decent unicode support, those "obsolete"
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excellent entailment abilities, sense of direction, and imagination are all still hallmarks of a strong mind. they are not sundials in a watch age.
Sucking my thumbs.. (Score:4, Funny)
And, for the record, I happen to be an outspoken anti-smartphone guy, likening them to Linus' security blanket. Might as well be suckin' your widdle thumbs, too.
God damn it... I went to answer a call and I just got slobber all over my iPhone again.
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I'm trying to get off your lawn...honestly. But I can't find the app for that.
46% eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually I am a bit surprised by the number. These are luxury items after all, and I'd suspect at least 25% of American just can't afford them even if they wanted them. The survey shows 13% of older Americans have the phones which should be the largest group in the demographics (or else my social security is safe after all). Thus numbers just don't feel right. Maybe they're defining "smart phone" in a simple way; ie any mobile phone that has any application at all, which includes what most kids would ca
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I think they are saying "majority of people who matter". Or maybe they're excluding flyover country [urbandictionary.com].
Something like the math that says "No one ever goes there anymore--it's too crowded."
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That would be a plurality not majority. A majority by its very definition is a subset of more than half of the group. 46% is not more than half.
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I bought my wife an iPhone to replace a broken laptop. It's her only connected device. What's not smart about that? It does everything she needs and cost less and is available wherever she goes while caring for the kids. The kids play educational games on it.
We have unlimited data on AT&T and pay ~$50 mo. x 2 (I also have one) with limited call time since we pretty much just use free IM chat with each other.
Our phones are really the equivalent of a laptop for us. The phone part is like Skype. It's just
Re:Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners... (Score:4, Insightful)
I chose to have a house down-payment rather than spending ~$1000/year on a phone...
I believe this is another example of early adopter-itis
True, at one (recent) point if you wanted a iphone you were writing a check for $120 per month for 2 years plus $500 upfront is more like $1500/year. So, I heard the price and "Forget about it, I'm priced out so I don't care anymore". Much like I don't bother following the price of sailboats over 50 feet long, or the new Ferrari market.
I "upgraded" in December from paying about $7/month for a dumb phone to a shocking $20/month for an android phone. So far so good.
Another example of early adopter-itis is when first released a picture window sized TV would have cost more than a (cheap) new car, so I ignore the entire market for years. To my complete amazement last fall when my old SD CRT was failing after 25 years of service, a picture window sized TV only costs about as much as a picture window, so I bought one. The TV shows and movies continue to suck, but now they suck in higher res, and my wife is happy, and it was very cheap.
I intentionally removed myself from the market when first released because the price was insane. Now its cheap and I'm shocked to be in the market. This happens over and over...
Good god! (Score:5, Funny)
It's worse than we ever suspected...
My friends, my family.. Every one of them could potentially be a smartphone owner.
I could be a smartphone owner myself and not even know it!
And 10% have no cellphone at all. (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah because you can't buy a normal phone anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything now is a bloated smartphone with poor reception and even poorer battery life
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You see where this is going.
LOL it turns out
So when will the price come down? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The price of the phone is nothing really. It's the damn contract that costs your ass. I refuse to pay out the ass for 3G data that is about the same speed as a dial-up modem in actual practice and is choked even harder once you actually use it for anything other than checking e-mail and browsing a few youtube vidz. All for more than my 20mbps always on and never throttled connection at my house. I just can't bend over and take it like that.
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Well I won't pay more for a data plan than my high speed internet costs while being forbidden to use it as an internet gateway. Give me a smart phone that will do wifi without 3g crap and I'll be happy, until then the dumb phone is still far more than I need.
And if I can check email chances are it will be the stupid phone's email and not the address I've been using for 16 years, and I just don't want to browse through web mail on a screen that small, no matter how many kids quiver at the thought of the mar
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Give me a smart phone that will do wifi without 3g crap and I'll be happy, until then the dumb phone is still far more than I need.
Any smartphone without a cell plan (even with out a sim installed) will do wifi.
And people you probably know have a drawer full of these phones that they are no longer using.
Ask them to factory reset one of them (wipe), and give them $20 bucks for it.
You don't get much besides web browsing and email, and you have to be in wifi range, and
you can even arrange for it to get incoming and maybe outgoing calls for zero money.
As long as you have wifi.
Re:So when will the price come down? (Score:5, Informative)
The price came down a couple years ago. You can get an Android slider for $99, and Virgin Mobile unlimited data (they've been threatening to cap it for some time) with about 300 minutes included for $35/month. Boost Mobile is $40-55/month. Other pre-paid services are nearly as cheap.
If you're paying $80/month for your cell phone service, you're probably an idiot, who is a slave to advertising and doesn't know how to shop around.
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$35/month
Please read my reply to Anonymous Coward [slashdot.org].
Smartphone service costs five times as much (Score:3)
There are smartphones for less than $80, no contract or lock.
Dumbphone service on Virgin Mobile USA, a Sprint company: $7 per month for occasional use. Smartphone service on the same carrier: $35 per month minimum. No, they won't let me activate a dumbphone plan on a smartphone, so I have to either carry two devices (a dumbphone for making calls and a smartphone for running applications on Wi-Fi) or pay $28 per month for minutes that I won't use just for the privilege of consolidating the devices
Re:Smartphone service costs five times as much (Score:5, Interesting)
Cry me a river. When I was growing up mobile telephones had rotary dials and vacuum tube finals. Calls were about $1.25 a minute ($6 in today's money.) There were 1-3 channels per city and you had to wait your turn. There was no encryption, anyone could listen in. You didn't own your phone, the phone company did, and they installed it in your car.
http://www.wb6nvh.com/MTSfiles/Carphone5.htm [wb6nvh.com]
Lawn.
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Duct tape: the cornerstone of every healthy and smart citizen.
Not if it's over your mouth and you're tied to a chair.
Yeah but... (Score:2)
Who needs a cell phone plan, when you can just use Wifi and Google Voice to send/receive calls/texts, and for FAR cheaper? This is where the smart phone really shines.
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Google voice really does next to nothing without a cell plan. You can't call with google voice alone. Its an elaborate answering machine until that point in time when google flips the switch and turns on SIP/Voip over WIFI.
What's a smartphone anyway? (Score:3)
I have a phone that has a Web browser, can send and receive e-mail, has a full QWERTY keyboard, and run Java apps. But I'm pretty sure it's considered a "dumb" phone. What exactly is it that makes a phone "smart"? Gestures? Siri? Android or iOS? My dumb phone would have been considered "smart" just 12 years ago, when the first Blackberry was introduced!
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But the survey does not necessarily check out your phone. In 2011 survey it seems 1/3 of respondents just claimed they had smart phone, only 2/5s were identified as smart phone based on the brand or platform. So some of those surveyed could have just reported something different than the term that kids use. Language is fluid, and marketing language is super-fluid. "Feature phone" is a term I had not even heard less than a year ago.
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My dumb phone would have been considered "smart" just 12 years ago, when the first Blackberry was introduced!
Yes, 12 years is hardly any time at all:
* People were still buying 5100-series Nokias powered by Ni-Cd batteries as on-contract phones.
* The end of the Newton MessagePad was still a recent event.
* Everyone was (mistakenly) hyping up for the release of Windows M.E.
* The term "smartphone" didn't even exist.
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In 2005, when I bought a Nokia N75, a Symbian S60 phone with a number keypad, AT&T said it was a featurephone. In 2008, when I bought a Nokie E71 that had basically the same OS (and exactly the same capacity for installing applications), AT&T said that I owned a smartphone and cancelled my unlimited featurephone plan. I've been told that AT&T labeled some J2ME phones as "smart" phones, even though by most definitions they aren't because they cannot run native apps. The distinction seems to be
and the rest of the majority (Score:2)
Couldn't care less about the features of a smartphone.
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Me either. I just upgraded two days ago to the LG Extravert (hate those stupid names). It is a dumb phone, but with a physical keyboard. I do end up texting a lot with family all over the states, and even the boss. My old phone was 6 years old (but state of the art for a dumb phone then) and I would still be using it if texting with it didn't drive me crazy.
On the upside, this $79 (with contract) phone cost me nothing since Verizon gave me a 100 buck credit for not changing phones in forever.
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I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?
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Not very. My Sony Ericsson "feature phone" has a built-in Facebook app that I've been trying to remove. When I have a text or media message to send to a contact, the first phuqn option in the "Send" menu is "To Facebook" or "To YouTube." Annoying as hell.
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I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?
I'm surprised you have time to post on Slashdot since you are keeping tabs on the "the vast majority" of smartphone users.
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I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?
Microsoft tried a social featurephone. It was called the Kin. [wikipedia.org] RIP. [engadget.com] It made sense when they first thought of the idea, partly because there was going to be a special data plan for it that would cost less than an unlimited data plan. When a manager at Microsoft decreed that the Kin project needed to use Windows Phone OS, the project was delayed by over a year, and by then Ve
On the Other Hand (Score:5, Funny)
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damned lies ... urm ... statistics (Score:2)
From the article ...
About the Survey
This report is based on the findings of a survey on Americans' use of the Internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from January 20 to February 19, 2012, among a sample of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (1,352) and cell phone (901, including 440 without a landline phone). For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. For results based Internet users (n=1,729), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.
So 41% (conveniently rounded down to "two in five") is 5 percentage points below 46% (conveniently rounded up to "nearly half" when it would have also been rounded down to "two in five" if a consistent quantum of 20% had been used). Five percentage points is *just* above the sampling error of 4.6. Yes, statistics mavens who know more than me, that means significance obtained at p < 0.05, but it also means that the actual values could just as easily have been 43% and 44%, which isn't
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My read: about 40% of the adults have an old-style phone; slightly more have a new-style phone. But what do the remaining nearly 20% have?
They're unemployed and on the verge of being homeless.
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Almost everyone I know who refuses to have a cell phone is making over $100K/yr. Yes, there's a blatant sampling error in my observation; I have one because I've been forced to have one by work.
Indeed. Fifteen years ago a cell phone meant you were so important that you had to be contactable at all times. Today a cell phone means you're so unimportant that people can pester you at any time.
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What's this "consistent quantum of 20%" nonsense? If you round to the nearest 10%, which is much more common, you get 40% and 50% percent, respectively. Now, if you were to express 40% as a ratio, what would be the most normal way to do so? That's right, two-fifths. Which is where the "fifths" comes from. To assume that that means that all the other ratios have to be expressed as fifths is silly. Nobody says "four-tenths". We automatically simplify that. But when it comes to 50%, we simplify that to
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Phrases like "2 out of every 5" implies quantizing to 20%. If they were consistently quantizing to 10% they'd have said 4 of 10, but then that's not different enough sounding from 46%.
In other words, it's a snow job.
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Phrases like "2 out of every 5" implies quantizing to 20%.
On what planet? You might just as well claim that because they referred to 46% as "about one half", they were obviously "quantizing" to 50%. These are Earth-humans we're discussing here, not Vulcans. We here on Earth routinely simply our ratios without implying anything by it.
they have smartphones because they were given one? (Score:2)
more like half people, or half of half people are talked into getting a smartphone, because it's "cheap" as it's almost offered when renewing the subscription, or maybe because smartphones crash in price and soon are to the $100 mark, or because they believe their blackberry look-a-like with a music player and web browser is a smartphone. endless reasons. study doesn't say how many people own a smartphone for text and voice only, and never hook it up to a PC, never plug the proprietary ear buds in, and nev
And the other half... (Score:4, Funny)
Going the other way (Score:2)
I'm planning to buy a iPad this year; and, once that's happened, I'm giving my Android phone away and moving back to a "dumb" phone. Smart phones are just too compromised in too many ways.
Next question (Score:2)
What % of American adults are smart?
poverty line (Score:2)
About 15% [nytimes.com] of Americans are below the poverty line. According to TFA, 19% of Americans don't own any kind of cell phone (smart or dumb). I don't know whether this says more about how Americans define poverty or more about how much Americans love cell phones. Someday soon I expect to be the last affluent, educated American under 50 who doesn't own a cell phone.
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You will be investigated (Score:5, Insightful)
I am the 54%. (Score:2)
I don't even own a mobile phone. I wonder how many American adults that would be. :P
Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables
Now it's the turn of the smartphone that will affect a whole new generation of people
Used to be that we know the address of a friend of ours
No more
With smartphone/tablets, you don't need to remember anything - by just tapping on the glass panel you will get all the info that you need
The more gadgets we surround ourselves, the dumber we will become
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Interesting)
Albert Einstein refused to memorize telephone numbers because they could be written down. Clearly, he was an idiot.
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:4, Insightful)
Albert Einstein refused to memorize telephone numbers because they could be written down. Clearly, he was an idiot.
Are you suggesting some people actively try to memorize phone numbers? For me, if it's someone I care about, and I dial it a few times, it just sticks.
Did he actively try to not remember them? Like my credit card number from the 80's - I have to agree with Einstein that it's a waste of resources, but it's just stuck in there - nothing I can do about it.
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I didn't know Raymond Babbitt [wikipedia.org] was Asian.
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their address?
And their phone number?
And their work phone number?
And their cell phone, pager, work cell?
And their work address?
And their email address?
And their work email address?
And their birthday?
Etc etc.
And for how many friends did you know this? And businesses you frequent? Acquaintances?
Instead of memorizing a rolodex, which is subject to change and being forgetten, carrying an easily accessible one with you is dumber?
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Funny)
What is this "pager" thing of which you speak? And why do I have to remember it?
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I suppose I should also point out as a contrast, those olden days before the whipper snappers got all dumb using smart phones, there were also a lot fewer numbers to remember. The most common scenario was a single number for an entire family, as opposed to a separate number for each member plus one for the house in general.
I suppose having dns instead of remembering all the ip addresses for the websites we visit. Is another example of getting dumber through advances of technology. Or not even remembering th
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Kids these days. Am I right?
No, I ain't gonna fall for this type of blanket statement
We old geeks have had plenty of encounters with the dumb ones in our generation, as well :)
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find these days that someone tells me something that sounds rather dubious, I look it up using my smartphone, find the truth and memorise that. I find that in checking facts when people tell me something, I am more likely to remember it later on.
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find these days that someone tells me something that sounds rather dubious, I look it up using my smartphone, find the truth and memorise that. I find that in checking facts when people tell me something, I am more likely to remember it later on.
This!
It Seems to me, having once gone to the effort you remember longer, even if the effort is small. (Someone will look this up and prove me wrong, but that's why I said it "seems".)
Of course the real beauty of this is the instant calling of BS (in the nicest possible way of course) when BS is spewn.
This prevents a lot of cockamamie rumors from ballooning out of control. I've been at a table of 6 when dubious stuff floated and seen 4 smartphones light up. (I've since practiced the phrase "I stand corrected" more frequently).
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Yes, because being able to look up information at a whim is going to make people more stupid.
Well, if you stop gathering and remembering facts because you can look them up you might not be stupid but you're ignorant in the "I couldn't point out Europe on the world map but I could look it up if I needed to" way. Ignorance leads to stupid questions/statements like "Why didn't AMD buy nVidia instead of ATI?" / "AMD should have bought nVidia instead of ATI." because you don't know the fact that nVidia was about twice as large AMD in market cap. There's a saying "Those who ignore history are doomed to r
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plain and simple, there is no need to memorize strings of numbers when a phone will hold them all for me, and this was pre smart phone just simply cell phone
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I used to have a calculator watch that stored phone numbers, long before I had a cell phone.
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In the past, your friends would draw you a simplified map of the neighboring streets using a device known as a pen on permanent non-volatile memory surface known as paper. The really neat thing was that as long you kept it dry, the information would be retained permanently. If you were really lucky, they might photocopy part of a map and place a photograph of their house. These too were really neat in that they stored street numbers, so you knew what end to travel too.
Sometime they might even leave the fron
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, your friends would draw you a simplified map of the neighboring streets using a device known as a pen on permanent non-volatile memory surface known as paper. The really neat thing was that as long you kept it dry, the information would be retained permanently. If you were really lucky, they might photocopy part of a map and place a photograph of their house. These too were really neat in that they stored street numbers, so you knew what end to travel too.
Sometime they might even leave the front porch light on, place balloons outside the entrance, or place candles along the driveway like landing lights, so you knew you were heading in the right direction.
A smartphone is really that much of a dumb-down
It's the over-reliance of gadgets that are making us more and more lazy
And the most dangerous part is, we are at the verge of being so lazy that we may become too lazy to think, to memorize, to use our own brain
5 or 6 generations ago, the whole world could go on functioning without electricity
3 or 4 generations ago, human beings started relying on electricity
And now, if there is a black-out, you see people started panicking
3 or 4 generation ago, banks could go on functioning without computers
Now? If the "system down" sign is up, there is a sure bet that you won't be able to do almost any transaction in a bank
Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late
Over-reliance on the smart phone will only get us into yet another pitfall --- what if the smartphone breaks down? What if the GPS gadgets break down? Are we able to function without them?
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Well, I'm an electrical engineer, so my paycheques would stop. On the upside, so would the cheques of the people who would be coming to collect the payments...
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Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late
Since when has knowing when to stop ever been part of human nature? We'll stop when the oil runs out, or when the Y2.038k bug has reduced us all to cannibalism (whichever comes first)... and not a moment before. :^P
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Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late
Since when has knowing when to stop ever been part of human nature? We'll stop when the oil runs out, or when the Y2.038k bug has reduced us all to cannibalism (whichever comes first)... and not a moment before. :^P
Can't argue with that :)
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the over-reliance of gadgets that are making us more and more lazy
That's just another way of saying effective. Time gained by offloading unimportant tasks to machines is time that can be better spent on more important goals. And yes, "having fun" fits too.
And the most dangerous part is, we are at the verge of being so lazy that we may become too lazy to think, to memorize, to use our own brain
I suppose you're demonstrating that by making big claims without showing the evidence that supports them?
5 or 6 generations ago, the whole world could go on functioning without electricity
3 or 4 generations ago, human beings started relying on electricity
And now, if there is a black-out, you see people started panicking
3 or 4 generation ago, banks could go on functioning without computers
Now? If the "system down" sign is up, there is a sure bet that you won't be able to do almost any transaction in a bank
Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late
Over-reliance on the smart phone will only get us into yet another pitfall --- what if the smartphone breaks down? What if the GPS gadgets break down? Are we able to function without them?
So? Worse things have happened and we've pretty much always survived. Occasional blackouts are just a nuisance, nothing more than a drop in a bucket compared to the advantages of these systems, and if shit really hits the fans and the systems go down permanently, our survival instincts will kick-in.
If members from the nobility who were used since birth to have servants to take care of their every need are able to do whatever it takes to eat and survive, I think we can l live without GPS or smartphones. Well, I still do, but it's not because I share your concerns.
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I believe everyone should experience being a pizza (or related) delivery driver for 3 months, without assistance from GPS.
Just learning how to read a map and knowing how addresses are numbered are extremely useful skills to have. A couple weekends ago I helped a lady who was following her smartphone's driving directions and ending up at a park when she needed an office building. Turns out her app couldn't tell the difference between 610 Jefferson St and 610 E Jefferson St. Relying on that app made her an ho
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Well, I think your argument is self-negating. Intelligence is not the rote memorization of facts, unless you consider books and computers to be the most intelligent things around.
But aside from that - as usual, I think the truth is somewhere in between your view and the others writing rebuttals.
I have absolutely no problem with conveniently storing data for which it serves no benefit to memorize. And there's far too much data for it to be reasonable to memorize even a small portion of what will be of use to
On "intelligence" (Score:2)
Well, I think your argument is self-negating. Intelligence is not the rote memorization of facts, unless you consider books and computers to be the most intelligent things around
I totally agree with you that rote memorizing of facts does not represent "Intelligence"
But "Intelligence" must still start from a base point
You see, "Intelligence" includes "Imagination", "Thinking", "Problem Solving"
How do you start imagining?
Often that not we start imagine something when we are not satisfied with the thing that we are facing in our real lives
When our wives ain't sexy no more, we start to imagine ourselves with very sexy girlfriends
When our house gets to crowded, we start to imagine havin
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The things you described aren't just facts, in the abstract - they are problems.
Knowing the king in the 1300s in the isles now known as Great Britain is a fact, not an actionable problem.
Fighting to remember and organize phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, etc., is a fact, but more importantly, a problem. Ironically, it's a problem we're mitigating by using our intelligence and creativity to make devices that make this information easily accessible and searchable.
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But "Intelligence" must still start from a base point
You see, "Intelligence" includes "Imagination", "Thinking", "Problem Solving"
How do you start imagining?
I start by knowing (not imagining) what it is I want to KNOW ABOUT, and having the best and most efficient tools around to get at that knowledge.
Smartphone, Computers, Books and Encyclopedias (even if obsolete), and Libraries, in that order.
Being able to use the most efficient tools to gather knowledge is more a sign of intelligence than is rote memorization.
Re:Are smartphones making us dumb? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is this obsession with "smartness"? With the ability of multiplying two digit numbers in your head? With memorizing ten digits on the fly?
Those skills are just tools, like calculators you mention or abakuses.
I used to call overseas directly 7-8 years ago, when VoIP did not pick up yet, and I used my phonebook. I did not have to memorize a single number, I lost the ability to memorize. It was very hard and took enormous amount of time to memorize numbers when I needed.
After that I switched to phone cards: dial local number, punch in a 10-digit code, punch another 10 digit number. It was impractical to store all of those in one number: not all phones supported that, my workphone addressbook was unmanageable, so I had to regain the ability to memorize those numbers, and I did. It takes me to look on the number I get from RussianSeattle for 5-10 sec, I can start dialing it right away.
Those abilities are not here, because they are not needed. If a human needs something he learns something very quickly.
We did not lose anything. We did not lose anything by stopping learning obligatory Greek and Latin post-Victorian England. We did not lose anything by stopping learning how to multiply with a slider.
Stop obsessing with rudimentary skills. Smartphones do not make us dumb. If anything, they make us even smarter. I learn about stuff faster than before, because I am surrounded with people with a data plan (I am still lingering on my old Samsung pre-data plan smartphone), and instead of forgetting about an atom of knowledge that I wanted to learn I am asking nearby brother in the mosque to check it out in Wikipedia.
I can imagine how much more stuff that I need I could learn by actually subscribing to one of those data plans.
I talked to an older brother from the mosque - he just got himself one of those and now is constantly reading Quran from it. "Why don't you go to the shelf pick a nice Mushaf and read from it?" I asked. "He said, it's too far and I will lose my place in the first row".
The revolution of a data plan is simply amazing and you people are talking about getting dumb?
I consider myself a neo-luddite with my aversion to technology, but _you_ are beating me hands down.
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I get the Amazon free ap of the day every day. Best thing ever. I threw music on as well, and some movies, in case I'm ever bored and stuck for something to do.
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Of that 46% know how to use their smart phone to it's full potential. Most of them just have them because it is the "in thing" to own.
... and if you think that's shocking, just wait until you hear what percentage of computer owners have yet to write their first computer program. Or what percentage of car owners haven't entered a single road rally.
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>... and if you think that's shocking, just wait until you hear what percentage of computer owners have yet to write their first computer program. Or what percentage of car owners haven't entered a single road rally.
That's not quite the same thing. A better car analogy would be: 46% of Americans own a 4-wheel drive, and 45 out of those have never been off of tarmac.
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