INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY: You can live without your smartphone - Polidicks

[QUOTE]In a report [PDF] released by the Online Publishing Association on Monday, the standout statistic was that 68-percent of smartphone owners now say they "can't live without their smartphones." What a bunch of babies. I don't care who you are or what you do: You can live without a goddamn smartphone.Unless I'm really in the dark about recent technological advancements, smartphones don't feed you, give you water, or provide you clothing. They don't make fire, yield medicine, or birth children. Smartphones, with their pages of apps and barely functioning "intelligent personal assistants," can't pitch you a tent in the rain or help you fend off a pack of angry hyenas. If you say you like your smartphone because it is a useful tool to help make life simpler, that makes a lot of sense. More power to you. But hammers are useful tools that make life simpler, too, and yet I can't imagine a world in which nearly 70-percent of hammer owners say they couldn't live without their nail-bangers. Proclaiming that you can't live without your iPhone isn't just measurably wrong, it's also kind of offensive. It's like saying you couldn't live without air conditioning or Breaking Bad or Christmas presents. The majority of the people in the world live without all that stuff, and most of them, I'd guess, do so reasonably happily. Yet 68-percent of smartphone users are willing to tacitly suggest that those people's lives aren't worth leading, because they don't have some phone in their pocket that tells them the weather or lets them play Plants vs. Zombies. Try telling a kid in Bosnia whose house is still speckled with bullet holes that you can't live without your smartphone. See how much sympathy you get from him. To be sure, I'm willing to bet that a healthy number of respondents to the OPA's poll were being tongue-in-cheek when they said they couldn't live without their devices. It's a flippant response to a leading question, and I doubt you could find even a handful of people who literally equate smarthpones with food and water. But language is important, and if there are millions of smartphone users out there willing to nod their heads in agreement when someone asks them if they need their iPhone or Android to live, something's gone badly wrong. To me, this problem is a symptom of a larger problem that's corroded America for at least as long as I've been alive. Namely, it seems to be increasingly difficult for many people to understand the difference between "need" and "want." Alive in a wealthy nation and during the most technologically advanced era of human history, the lines between what makes life possible and what makes life comfortable have been erased. Food, clean water, and shelter are now within reach for most Americans, and for a lot that stability has existed for decades. With the building blocks of existence now taken for granted, we've reached a time in which food isn't seen as a necessity the same way, say, our blood isn't seen as a necessity. The average person rarely considers that they need to pump blood through their veins and heart in order to live—our bodies just do that, and we don't think about it. If you're reading Gizmodo, it's likely you think about food in the same way: You don't stress where it's coming from, it's just there. And because our food is just there, it allows us to begin creating new requisites for life. We need air conditioning. We need television sets. We need $300 headphones. We can't live without our smartphones. It's like we've become a nation of teenagers, the kind who scream melodramatically, "You're ruining my life!" if our parents take away our phone or car privileges. I really like that I'm able to check my email from my phone. It's saved me a lot of time, stress, and work headaches. I love texting and using my laptop and Google Hangouts, which is probably the only good thing to come from Google+. But I also think it's important to constantly remind myself that if all that stuff went away, my life would be different, not worthless. For the first few weeks it would probably be a huge hassle, but after a while I would get over it; perhaps I'd flourish. In fact, some studies show that Americans tend to be less happy today than we were 30 years ago, before widespread computer ownership, before smartphones were in every pocket, before we obsessively checked our emails. Other studies show an inverse correlation between the amount of media kids consume and their happiness. We want—nay, need—all this stuff, and when we get it, it still doesn't make us necessarily enjoy life more, despite the fact that we now can't imagine life without it. One of NBC's most anticipated new fall shows is Revolution, a drama about what happens when, for some reason, every piece of technology in the world simply ceases to work. Millions are devastated for a while, of course. But the story at the heart of the program is about family and their close friends picking up and moving on. Because there is life beyond technology, even if it won't feel that way when you wait in line for the next iPhone. [Editor's note: I don't agree with this guy at all.][/QUOTE] [URL]http://gizmodo.com/5936979/yes-you-can-live-without-your-goddamn-smartphone?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow[/URL]

I lost my smart phone while drunk in a taxi. I've lived without it for 8 months now. It was painful at first.

But without my smartphone how will I do simple tasks like look at Facebook on the road, download movies, and help birds murder/suicide a bunch of pigs all at once?

I never upgraded. I still got my phone from 2005.

I don't even have a phone.

I have a galaxy sII but it's hardly ever charged, most of the time I use it to just call people when necessary and not much else. I rooted it and got custom roms and the like even though I won't use the new applications or anything, just because I wanted a semi transparent options menu :v:

It's like im reading a high school persuasive essay instead of a news article.

I can't live without this. [img]http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/008/134/nokia-3310-troubleshooting.jpg[/img]

[QUOTE=Garik;37388957]I can't live without this. [img]http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/008/134/nokia-3310-troubleshooting.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Weapon, tank armour, brick, telephone, is there anything it can't do.

I get lost very often without my smartphone.

To be honest since my Experia Play is a gaming phone with a controller built in when you slide it up I use it all the time during breaks either at work or when I am in the sixth form because their is nobody worth talking to around. Minecraft + other decent games makes those long days happy. So in my case in a first world country I would say that I cannot live without my smart phone and be anywhere near the same level of happy. I mean I went a week or so without it once when I lost the charger and those weeks was so flat out boring during my breaks because I had nothing to do. ---- This article is just some prick taking the term "I cannot live without my phone" too fare. People are going to use that term as it is a common one and most people I know say it like a joke they don't literally mean it.

Smartphones are useful in some cases (GPS, oh dear GPS, you saved me several times) but living without it ain't a problem at all. At best it would annoy me for the first few days.

Why do we consider stuff coming out of Gawker news?

I don't know how I ever lived without a smartphone. If I ever lost mine my life would probably be ruined temporarily.

Of course you can live without your smartphone. But you have to admit it's incredibly useful for many things like checking when is your next bus or train, finding directions if you get lost, check when is the post office closing, searching for a phone number, ... I don't even take a map or anything when I go to a city I don't know Yes you can do all that stuff without a smartphone but it's so handy that once you get one, it's hard to go back

I use my smartphone for a lot of stuff. It's my GPS, music player, alarm clock, fitness instructor (yes as sad as that sounds, it keeps track of your routine and progress), calendar/event reminder, note taker, music tagger, the occasional game and of course a phone, among other things. I COULD live without all that, but I wouldn't want to...it helps keep me organized, wakes me up if I have a lecture early or an event to go to and keeps me entertained on the way...I think I just realized how much I take my smartphone for granted...

[QUOTE=alien_guy;37388841]I don't even have a phone.[/QUOTE] really?

[QUOTE=Uncle Bourbon;37389242]really?[/QUOTE] Some people are like that. One of my friends has a phone but he keeps it off all day every day. We literally cannot contact him if he's outside his house, which causes problems if there is a change of plans or something

Meh. I have an iPhone, only use it for melting some intelligence at a train station or bus stop with Fruit Ninja or something, other than that it's pretty much an iPod, and a phone strapped together. [editline]24th August 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=The golden;37389214]You should consider breaking some of your dependencies on a small and fragile device. Seriously. If anyone has become so dependent on their phone that it would ruin them if they lost it then they have some serious rethinking to do.[/QUOTE] I think it's less about the phone itself than what it's worth. It would be like burning money.

I hate people who are glued to their fucking phone all the time, like the other day I was sat in a bus station when there was some woman shouting at her kids to stop messing about while she was on her phone rather than paying any attention to her kids, even worse is when people are texting while walking over the road, as if not dying isn't as important as replying to a text message.

I browse like 2 hours a day on my iPhone, uses the GPS quite often, stream almost all my radio when i'm driving. It would be very annoying to be tied to a laptop/desktop, just for some reading on the web.

I could live without a smarphone. Tablet, on the other hand...

[QUOTE=The golden;37389214]You should consider breaking some of your dependencies on a small and fragile device. Seriously. If anyone has become so dependent on their phone that it would ruin them if they lost it then they have some serious rethinking to do.[/QUOTE] Well I guess it wouldn't ruin my life, but it would pretty much put it on hold temporarily. I use the same phone for work and personal use so it would pretty much fuck up both sides of my life if I lost it.

I don't really use my smartphone all that much, but I recognize how useful it could be. I'd be using it a hell of a lot more if I could get used to touchscreens / if touchscreens weren't retarded.

[QUOTE=Uncle Bourbon;37389242]really?[/QUOTE] I find the concept of paying to communicate archaic, plus really dont like talking to people. I used to go to my grandparents house for lunch in high school and I could go through the whole lunch only saying around 3 words.

After my 1990s phone started to fail I begrudgingly moved onto an early 2000s phone a couple of years ago. [QUOTE=alien_guy;37389365]plus really dont like talking to people.[/QUOTE] Social awkwardness masked into manly character trait?

[QUOTE=Falchion;37389375] Social awkwardness masked into manly character trait?[/QUOTE] I dont understand that question.

Smartphones are great for people that actually need one. Rather annoying when people just get one and all they do is text / phone people with it:downs:

I'm more worried about the smartphones living without us. I got a new phone recently and I swear to god it's been plotting.

I still just use a regular old cell phone. Can even browse the internet on it.