07 May 2024

"The first day after the smartphone..."
=======================================

A little time ago i had pondered if i should abandon the
smartphone... well, the decision was taken out of my hands
by my son who killed my phone yesterday. Todler salvia
has some properties that are very detrimental tothe  health
of electronic devices it seems...

Well, i need a phone, so i took my wife and son yesterday
and we made a little trip to the nearest "Media Markt" to
take a look which dumbphones are available and find one
which doesn't look to much like an "senior-citizen-phone".
I chose an Nokia 105 in charcoal, extremely cheap at 22.00
Euros and reminiscent of the business phones i liked to own
back in the early 00s. On the technical side there is not
much to tell: Its a phone, you can phone with it and if you
are able to handle T9 input you can write text messages too.
Oh, and it has a flashlight and a build in radio, but this
is it.

Today was my first day without a smartphone and... its
frightening how often i realized that THIS would be a
moment where i would take out the phone and mindlessly
browse the web, look at mastodon or doomscroll through some
news site. Instead i was now forced to focus a bit more and
occupy my mind with my surroundings instead of zoning out.

I have no idea how practical it will be over the next days,
weeks, months and so on to opt out of the modern phone
world, but this craving for this "digital pacifier" i
seemingly developed has to go away.

On another front:

I was really delighted to read in logouts phlog that i am
indeed NOT the only person digging through gopherspace that
has a somewhat soft spot for a certain british operating
system ;-)

At the moment i am refreshing my skills in BASIC, a
language that i haven't touched in earnest for.. a really
long time.