Dumbphone dilemma ----------------- It's no news for long time readers of this phlog (which, goodness, is almost a year old now!) that I'm not a fan of smartphones. The long list of evils that I attribute to them includes, but is probably not limited to: * Devices with cameras, microphones and GPS receivers which are always on one's person and always connected to the internet and are powered by closed-source software are ideal surveillance devices and will *inevitably* be used as such at least some times by both state and commercial entities. * The walled garden "app store" paradigm gives computing device manufacturers an historically unprecedented level of control over the software that runs on those devices and introduces an historically unprecedented barrier toward development. Many people's primary computing device is now one that they have almost no hope of being able to program. * The rapid release of new phone models, the huge marketing hype surrounding new releases and the excessive social cachet that comes from having the latest phone leads to people upgrading every year or two, even though their phone still works fine, which is tremendously wasteful and contributes to a ballooning e-waste problem. * Having an eternally internet connected device always within reach facilitates a kind of endlessly distracted headspace which is terrible for your attention span and your social well-being, and even if you are aware of this it's hard to resist it with will power alone because software for the devices is actually engineered deliberately to induce precisely this state of mind. * The user experience in generally is actually just pretty bad. Battery life sucks, typing on a touchscreen *really* sucks, the things often get unfomortably warm if you put them under load. But, of course, I cannot deny that the things can be convenient, sometimes tremendously so. So I do use one, but I'm very particular about it. Aside from my first, 7 or 8 years ago now, I have never actually bought a smartphone. A nice side-effect of the endless high speed release of slightly improved devices mentioned above is that you *always* have a close friend or family memeber who has just upgraded and whose old phone is now useless to them, so you can just survive off their cast-offs. Whenever I get a new phone I immediately flash it with Cyanogenmod or, nowadays, LineageOS, even though this always, on every device I have ever tried, has huge negative consequences for the performance of the GPS chip, for reasons I cannot fathom. I only install stuff from F-Droid, and never put any Google software on there or link it to a Gmail account, even though this eliminates a lot of convenient uses because institutions like banks or cities never publish APK files for their apps, instead relying on Google's walled garden, so I can't, e.g. use my phone to buy a bus ticket in Helsinki and have to seek out a paper ticket vending machine like some kind of caveperson. So I am an embittered, reluctant smartphone user at best. When I reread Bruce Sterling so clearly pointing them out as the fundamental vehicle by which the Internet of Things will be imposed upon us whether we want it or not, just like electrification was previously, I felt the stirrings of the desire to reject them outright and proudly. It's long kind of bothered me that almost nobody does this. I've alluded previously to the fact that, up until about a year ago, I felt pretty negative about technology and the internet because I felt like plenty of people were aware of the many massive problems but nobody seemed to have the kind of principled committment required to stop using the problematic elements (well, except, as always, Stallman-sama). Even hardcore privacy advocates, tor developers and people like that all had smartphones and Twitter accounts. I listened to an intereview with Bruce Schneier, who I have long trusted and admired, with one of the people behind the "Technoskeptic" podcast[1]. After talking about all the problems with smartphones, Bruce baldly asserts that we can't just *not* own a smartphone if we're unhappy with this, as if it were physically impossible to survive without one. The host of the interview immediately replies that in fact, he *doesn't* have a smartphone, completely demolishing Bruce's claim, and Bruce simply *ignored* the guy and went on with his pre-planned line. I'm really disappointed that he didn't take the opportunity to actually talk to the guy about this option. So I wondered about biting the bullet and trying the allegedly impossible. I did some research and I could quite cheaply (about EUR35) get a nice Nokia "dumbphone" (the 150) which would suit my needs quite well, which mainly means that it can do calls, SMS and play mp3s from an SD card. This covers everything important I actually have to do day-to-day, and would let me relegate my smartphone to travel-only use, when the GPS, translation and other such functions really are tremendously useful. Heck, I'm even very excited to learn that apparently the SD card in this phone will show up as a USB mass storage device if I plug it into my computer. This is an absolute killer feature for me, as sad as that sounds. This used to be totally standard behaviour, then for some reason, both it and expandable SD card storage became as rare and hens teeth. My enjoyment of my phone plumetted immediately once getting files to/from it involved anything more complicated than just plugging it into my computer and mounting it and then using perfectly standard tools. The only thing that's really holding me back is the simple fact that if I went ahead with this place I'd be buying a new electronic device, powered by a custom LiPo battery and therefore destined to be landfill, more to make a philosophical point than anything else, and I don't really feel comfortable with that. I take the stewardship of the things I buy pretty seriously and newly manufactured computing devices come with an especially heavy sense of responsibility. Buying one not to fulfill an actual need but just to make me feel better about myself is a dubious proposition. This is a special case of a much more general problem. When you decide to change your lifestyle to make it more minimalistic or sustainable or whatever, if you're not careful it's surprisingly easy to turn the initial energy of this undertaking into an episode of buying new stuff to replace old stuff you already have and which works just fine, simply because you want to own more minimsliastic or sustainable versions of what you already have. This is an easy trap to fall into but it can totally defeat the purpose of your new resolutions. It almost always makes more sense to stick with what you already have. I've invested quite a lot of time and effort in minimising the amount of harm that my smartphone can do to me, perhaps I should be satisfied with that and not buy a new device I don't really need just to prove a point? [1] https://thetechnoskeptic.com/podcast002/