Recently my coworker asked me if I could recommend any physical alarm clocks. He said that phone alarm causes him to pick up the phone the first thing in the morning and he wants to break away from this habit. I guess at some point the society as a whole will start fighting back.
My wife and I recently watched the HBO Dune miniseries (it’s great!) and I was thinking how bizarre it would be if people in that universe were spending their days passive scrolling the screen on their pocket computers.
Wall-E depicted a future like that, but I can’t really think of any other books or movies that imagine that kind of future for humanity. Surely this is a phase we are going through, right?
Fahrenheit 451 has the wife mindlessly listening to airpods all day, even while having conversations (requiring skill in lipreading to avoid interruption). The airpods are described as Seashells or ear thimbles, small radios with speakers that sit in the ear canal.
"Super Sad True Love Story" has that and some other interesting insights into potential evolution of existing media landscape, where watching full Narnia movie makes you movie buff and reading books makes you an icky old man. Book is fairly sad as the title suggests, but mostly due to world it portrays. Some of the trends were captures pretty well; some likely won't age that well.
"no it's dumb in all the right ways, which is the point"
Notably I have notifications but can't act on them, which prevents me from picking up the phone just to check notifications and then be drawn into doing actions. YMMV.
Agreed. My Garmin fenix is one of the most useful things I own. It's just 'smart' enough in the ways I need it to be (mostly for exercise/health), and 'dumb' enough not to bother me with useless dopamine nudges from apps from my phone. It's a delightful piece of technology that improves my life in subtle ways rather than detracts from it or saps it.
I've tried that, but found them to be too easy to sleep through unless my watch wrist is very close to my head (without a pillow between it and my ear). The sound isn't particularly loud and the vibration is similarly shallow. Useful for reminder alarms when I'm awake though.
My current success is using the Amazon branded wiretap for alarms. Interacting with the dumb cloth-eared irritation sometimes annoys me into being awake rather than hitting the virtual snooze yet again, and it doesn't have the doom-scroll potential of my phone.
Can you explain what the "Amazon branded wiretap for alarms" is? I did some searches with those terms but can't really understand what you're referring to.
I refer to the Echo Dots that can control my lights and a few other things (so I don't have to move the cats when I need to switch something, but have left the phone that otherwise has control out of reach), and occasionally read audiobooks, as my “Amazon branded wiretaps”.
To use them for alarms I just have to say “Computer, set an alarm for 8 in the morning” repeatedly until the damned things understand (I swear they understand a snarky tone far better than when I speak more neutrally (except when Lt Cmdr Data is on TV, they listen to him first time every time!)).
I had a feeling I was missing out on a joke or something haha. I thought you might be referring to a silent alarm type device. I'm really interested in finding an alternative that doesn't involve me scrolling through twitter until my brain fog clears up. I don't know if I could cave into buying a Amazon device like that though...
I don't think I'd handle a wearing a watch anymore, smart or not.
For waking up, something not technological but working 99% of the time for me: pets (or kids) though you'd want other reasons as well to have those beyond waking you up early in the morning...
Most of my life I've had cats or dogs and their internal clock is amazingly on time. They are actually smart and try different things if you don't wake up at first, adapting to their owner. They include waking mechanisms such as sound, touch, light pain, emotional rewards and possibly guilt tripping/punishment to keep you accountable if you fail to wake up. Birds can work too but I wouldn't recommend keeping a rooster in your bedroom for an alarm unless you're blaring-alarms-levels of hard to wake up and don't have neighbours or a partner, these guys don't have an indoor voice.
Point is you're then forced to care for the pet, wether it wakes you to go out, get food or get cuddles and bob's your uncle: your chances of picking up your phone and doomscrolling first thing in the morning are much lowered.
if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway? if it was a bit smarter you can quickly act on it, but using a smartwatch is so uncomfortable you wouldn't want to use it for anything unnecessary.
>if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway?
Not necessarily. My smartwatch is basically a beeper. I see messages come in, then I mentally prioritize them. 90% of the time, it can wait at least an hour, maybe longer. It's conditioned me (and people around me) that instant reachability is neither necessary nor desirable. It makes it easier to focus on what's in front of me instead of constantly tickling a slab of glass.
I don't know how true this really is, but I read somewhere there is a generational divide now, where older people are happy to see an SMS and leave it to respond later, perhaps days later, while the younger generation would consider "being left on read" as an offence and therefore would feel compelled to immediately act on it to not offend.
Things you read as notifications don't show up as read, even if you dismiss the notification.
As for the watch, I look at the thing and immediately can classify as truly urgent, needs immediate action or non-urgent and leave it piling as a todo list.
As a consequence I've begun to regularly forget where I put my phone, which is honestly quite liberating.
I've also started to aggressively cull away badges and notifications privileges from many apps.
oh interesting, how do you define older here though?
I'm a bit skeptical because i read a similar comment about answering calls immediately vs. letting it go to the answering machine already being such a divide.
Makes me feel old for thinking anyone offended by my taking hours if not days to respond to a non urgent text is welcome to go be someone else's friend.
It comes with other benefits as well. Not even the cheapest alarm clock has ever failed me. Sure, it can run out of battery power but the low power icon shows up months before it runs out of juice. Phone alarms on the other hand? I had them not triggering at all, or the vibration motor in the phone being stuck (?) and thus not working temporarily, etc... Hence I also prefer physical alarm clocks without software that have one job and one job only.
I've had strange time issues lately with iOS and macOS.
Initially I thought it was a TZ issue because of automatic location but the offset ended up being inconsistent with any TZ. Looks like a mix of RTC and NTP issue, the latter hiding the former when it works but revealing it when it fails.
Not really relevant but I'm going to say it anyway. I hate devices that tell me about "low" battery long in advance of actually going flat, it simply trains me to ignore the notification and then it unceremoniously dies on me at a later time.
In this particular case it's my use of NiMH batteries, which have a different discharge slope than normal Alkaline batteries. So it's not really a "feature" of the device but rather a limitation of the type of batteries used. With my alarm clock the signs when to charge the batteries are very obvious (the LCD starts fading away so it becomes hard to read, but the device is still functioning perfectly for some more weeks even then - it just doesn't much power at all).
Yes we are trying to fight back, but sadly I'm starting to think it will only be the next generations, the ones not even born yet that will fully internalize the lessons of our mistakes.
I use a physical alarm clock, but what distracts me is I have to pick up my phone multiple times a day for stupid MFA prompts. It's so easy to have a quick check of an app.
I would really like a product for like £40 that's essentially a very small (4" screen maybe? maybe smaller?) locked down android phone that's entire purpose is to run 2fa apps (maybe including banks), this would not only separate my banks from my phone so I can flash whatever OS I want to it, solve the convenience issue of needing 2 big phones to do this otherwise, and stop 2fa apps from leading to distraction.
Siri home-pod mini “Hey Siri- set alarm for…” or “Hey Siri- what is the time”. Added benefit of now glowing LED in your bedroom and you can play relaxing sleep sounds if needed.
