As somebody who had an always on internet connected PDA back it times when most PDAs were black and white, I can say it will eventually pass. The sense of novelty will vanish, and the thing will not be as interesting when an average person first see it.
> As somebody who had an always on internet connected PDA back it times when most PDAs were black and white, I can say it will eventually pass.
I don't think the software and cultural environment was that same for those devices as it is for smartphones now. An old internet-connected PDA chiefly had utility apps like this guide advocates. There was nothing from giant companies whose business is to capture and sell your attention, no attention slot machines, no games built to drive in-app purchases. Things now are qualitatively different, even though the hardware might be in some ways comparable.
I lived in the time when slot machines were standing on the street in the open in Russia, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people not.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a bling bling slot machine is to waste time and money.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
It takes no special personality to get an idea that clickfarming app must be removed, and take actions to do so.
My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request is to "remove Google nagware and lock/destroy/delete google pay so, god forbid, your child will never ever buy anything in that Internet thing mouth breathers waste themselves on."
> I lived in the time when slot machines were standing on the street in the open in Russia, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people not.
Plenty of "normal people," even intelligent ones, are addicted to smartphones (though the degree of addiction varies). Smartphone slot machines are subtle enough to snare people would wouldn't be taken in by a traditional slot machine, even though they use the same primal re-enforcement mechanisms.
> It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
I think this comment reflects a bizarre disconnect from everyday reality. By your logic, you're labeling a ridiculously large fraction of the population as "mentally infirm." "Basic logical reasoning" is not something people typically apply to everyday activities like smartphone use; those are typically done on autopilot and bypass it, because "basic logical reasoning" is expensive and slow.
>you're labeling a ridiculously large fraction of the population as "mentally infirm."
Well, to me it feels that people from parts of the world where one has no state institutes to fend them, tend to have more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them. Other than "pocket slot machines," people living there have to care about many more malignities: black mackler trying to steal your granny's apartment, bizarre religious sects trying to encroach your children, impunous sexual maniac killers on every corner, are things an average individual have to care, other than "relatively innocuous" encounters with regular racketeering/extortion/fraud.
A mentally firm person can not only tell that "wasting himself in a slot machines parlor is bad because I've been told to," but to reason that by himself about whatever malevolent encroachment on their wallet/assets/mental wellbeing/social position.
To a very average proletarian parent in Russia or China, and likely in much of the world outside of nanny state countries, it is glaringly obvious that Goog runs an equivalent of a slot machine business. And they take a 100% right conscious decision to block apps and google pay on their children smartphones.
Why an "enlightened, intelligent Western person" doesn't do the same? Were they desensitized by decades of wellbeing to the real, tangible threat of social predation?
> To a very average proletarian parent in Russia or China, and likely in much of the world outside of nanny state countries, it is glaringly obvious that Goog runs an equivalent of a slot machine business. And they take a 100% right conscious decision to block apps and google pay on their children smartphones.
[citation needed]
I'm extremely skeptical that any population as a preternatural ability to detect novel forms of scams and exploitation. The smartphone slot machines are novel in that they steal your attention, which people were not primed to be as sensitive to as attempts to steal money.
While I'm not very familiar with Russia, I have a little more familiarity with China, and I don't detect anything there that makes me think that the Chinese are more resistant to smartphone addiction. If anything makes them different, it's the preexisting cultural emphasis that children should be studying or cramming for high-stakes tests pretty much all the time to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. That has nothing to do with a "more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them."
