It's only that way because you let it be. It is possible to operate in life without staring at a small screen all day. I hardly ever look at mine, and yet I'm a fully functioning person contributing to society in a positive manner. You just have to admit it is a problem, and take it from there
Disagree here. We could have very different sets of obligations in life coming from different sources, not all of which are under your control.
And the phone does consolidate many, many technologies that used to be disparate objects. Now, you can also live life without a camera, CD player or walkman, cookbooks, planner/calendar (i actually still use a paper one in addition to calendar/reminder apps), and letters coming in the mail, sure. But I don’t think you’ll get fat proposing that to everyone, and these are just a few examples. Not everyone is going to want to live a life of pure asceticism.
I think back on my parents’ stacks of mail and realize that searchable email is way better than that.
I also just bought concert tickets for a few shows in the summer. Yes, there is a paper ticket option, that you pay to have mailed to you. Have you ever lost a paper ticket before, or tried reselling them? Much easier to deal with with the AXS app.
A buddy visited a while back and getting him a transit card without using the smartphone option took about 30 minutes.
I think it’s just that after having centralized so many things into one device, there’s a new step function horizon to cross to make it more effective to use or come up with a new form factor.
