People living with disabilities use their phone to help them find and access services which they need. Paying bills, getting cash at the bank, etc all previously required physically queuing up.

Yes - not all modernization and tech "advancement" has improved people's lives. Postmodernism is a side effect of a capitalist system. Communication has become a commodity to be consumed.

Unfortunately we haven't yet created a Linux-like philosophy that applies to mobile phones. With Unix, you use files or file handles to interface between command line tools. You incorporate the tools together in scripts to create more complex applications. How that philosophy can be transformed into a mobile device? I'm not sure.

Tech needs creative people to build things that help others live better rather than screw their life up.

I try to be as minimalist as possible about the digital software I use and to only use it as a tool, not as endless entertainment. I run a custom dwm, along with CLI only software, my only GUI software is Firefox. I don't use social media whatsoever, aside from Lemmygrad.

For a while I was on the Gemini protocol, liking the simple aspect of it. Though, it's become way too reactionary, it's filled with conservatives debating white genocide and so on. I did find Carl Newport's Digital Minimalism book of help, though in some aspects it was too bland in my opinion.

Like you said, at the moment we should change how we approach technology itself, and we shouldn't do it as everything devices. I can hardly focus when I'm not reading on my eBook reader, I don't even use addictive services. I can use just fine an early 2010s laptop as my main computer, though I can't come here because the browser lags too much. Everything else is quite good in my case, and it fits my writing needs nicely.

Speaking of analog devices that were replaced by phones, I very much enjoy analog watches. Not the fancy, shiny ones, but normal watches. They're much more practical than any phone for checking the clock in my opinion. I also own a calculator that's solar powered, and it's a great experience.

Yeah I definitely saw what you mean, much of the Linux, Small Web, etc. is very anti-technology and goes reactionary most of the time. Partly cause it's full of conservatives. I criticise new useless technology such as Smart TVs because it's capitalism's way of "innovation" that is predatory, not because new = bad. Too bad there aren't more leftists in the FOSS communities, though.

Because of autocorrect I forget how to spell. Today I had to look up how committee is spelt. I have turned it off completely everywhere. Spell checkers too.

I try to take a "digital vacation" occasional. I will let my friends/wife know that I'm going to be off-line but hanging out at a bar or a certain part of the city for a few hours with my phone off. I never turn it on for anything, and I just roam around. If I get lost? Good! Maybe i'll discover something new while I'm roaming and trying to figure out where I am.

Maybe I'll smoke some weed and just observe stuff, maybe I'll just lay down in a park for a while, whatever. The point is to disconnect for a while. It's liberating.

Techmology. What is that all about? Is it good? Or is it wack?

I believe as individuals and society we are over reliant on unnecessarily advanced technology and should seek alternatives to distance ourselves from this.

I feel about the same way, to the point I don't even really want print media to die. We're still looking at something right in front of us, but at least it isn't a screen. I've been framing it mentally as part of an intentional relationship I want to have with technology, and I think generally others should consider this too. Adopt technology selectively and critically, don't just let them foist new consumer durables on you, LOL.

I feel the same way. I need to get off IPhones ASAP. Unfortunately, I’m not old enough to have older tech. All I have is an IPod touch which has been designed obsolete and has no battery and some headphones that have terrible sound. I guess my new ereader sort of counts. It’s not touch screen but it amazes me how the battery can last so long and the screen doesn’t hurt my eyes. I Guess my dad’s records count, and that I still use a Wii U.

I don’t know how you use a typewriter frequently, but I do kind of hate having to type on this touchscreen. I don’t know anything about computers or Linux, but I kind of want to. Anyone interested in low tech, older, and more environmentally friendly ways of doing things should check out https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/, if they haven’t heard of it.

I guess I have more or less the opposite perspective. I don't like collecting physical things (harder to store and organize, a pain when moving apartments), although I do have spares for a lot of things that I expect to eventually break

good god no I couldn't do this, I'm already extremely disorganized and can't find my phone wallet or keys for hours in my room at times, can't imagine how much worse it would be if I had to keep up a bunch of other stuff

Same, I use an iPod for music, I try to pay with cash when possible and my main laptop is 15 years old. It’s idiotic that they want to move already existing offline things into cloud based subscription based ones, and how they slow down and stop updates for capable devices, and how they intentionally make things extremely hard to repair.

On the smart phone, it is an incredible tool humans have dreamed of for years (The collective information of humanity and the ability to communicate with people 1000s of kilometers away all in your pocket), yet the capitalists managed to make it as addictive as possible, to the point people would do horribly stupid things to please its algorithm and spend 7+ hours a day on it mindlessly scrolling without purpose.

Maybe it’s a power humans weren’t meant to have or its a ploy by the capitalists to distract and deceive the working class, but I digress.

I feel the exact same way, and I've been trying to not overly rely on my laptop and smartphone

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I can appreciate analog and/or specialized tools. I think typewriters, film cameras, watches, etc. are all fascinating. I might enjoy engaging with them. However, a low end Android is cheaper more accessible to most, assuming limited finances and/or no inheritance of such items. 'Everything machines' can be a boon for those individuals by means of concentrating utility and reducing cost. Evidently, capitalism nonetheless creates issues with this, as others have correctly discussed.

I would say that in China, one uses smartphones for neerly everything, even more so than in the global north. This is for various reasons, but it does have practically since all you ever need will be in your phone, including wallet and keys. This does make the development of HarmonyOS by Huawei very interesting. It may abate some of the current issues, especially given that I believe the OS is open source.

I'm on the same vibe but I'm also a compulsive hoarder, which is why I keep every old tech thing that is still barely functional and try to make them be something useful for what still works. So I have an old phone that serves as a music downloader/player, a notebook I'm turning into a very large e-reader, a couple of busted headphones I use only for sound isolation or testing and the list goes on. I'm still fairly reliant on my phone for browsing, but I'm really not fond of how unified and fragile modern hardware has become.

For the most part "low tech" solutions are not just more efficient in resources, but they're also much better developed with the dedicated user in mind. Which is why stuff like vim, bash, tmux, arch are usually leagues ahead of their corporate competitors, specially now with the AI craze where not even the developers have control of their product.

Yeah, especially in cars, like you see the features and half of them will literally never be used ever