@galtions I see more conversations and smiles, per capita, at the market than just about anywhere else! It’s the kind of face-to-face interactivity that the world needs more of, much more!
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I see the same thing among endurance runners and walkers after a group run or walk.
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Extrapolating from this statement about LANDLINE calls in the Nottingham College article…
Ofcom, the communications regulator, has said the total time spent on landline calls in 2018 was 44 billion minutes, down from more than 100 billion minutes just six years earlier.
…I can appreciate how cellular-service providers expect no serious financial risk when offering unlimited CELLULAR calling for a fixed price.
In the aggregate, people simply do not make as many calls today as they did ten or twenty years ago.
In contrast to traditional smartphones, the Mudita Kompakt is much more calling-centric. It would be interesting to know whether Kompakt owners will make more calls/year on average than do the owners of traditional smartphones!
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@roberto This is such a tragic commentary on where we are as a culture.
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I just watched an episode of the “Rich Kids Go Skint” TV series. The episode first appeared seven years ago (in 2018). The rich, 21-year-old woman in the episode (Season 1, Episode 2) used her Apple devices to make VIDEO calls with her two sisters. She seemed to be very comfortable having those conversations by video.
If she was 21 years old in 2018, then she was born by 1997, which means that she was born at the end of Generation Y (Millennials) or at the beginning of Generation Z (Zoomers), depending on who defines that difference.
This makes me wonder:
- Are those born well into the Gen-Z period also just as anxious about making VIDEO calls as they are about making AUDIO calls?
- Are Zoomers MORE or LESS likely than Millennials to make VIDEO calls?
- To what extent have VIDEO calls replaced AUDIO calls for Millennials and Zoomers?
- To what extent do Millennials and Zoomers prefer VIDEO calls to AUDIO calls?
- Do Millennials and Zoomers prefer VIDEO calls only for relatives and close friends?
- Do Millennials and Zoomers suffer from AUDIO-call anxiety MORE or LESS than they suffer from VIDEO-call anxiety?
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Wow! I didn’t know other people experienced this too! I used to love cordless phones and would spend hours on the phone with my best buddies when I was a teen.
I also made many, many calls during the course of work over many years, including dealing with upset customers and placating them. I used to LOVE phones and calls.
Then something changed with mobile phones and I have experienced what the articles says, anxiety over conversations days before hand. I am actively avoiding making calls at present due to the phone handset being ‘smart phone’ which is very high EMF. The thing must have been designed by creatures from the netherworld, however it meets a need just now so I persist with it in VERY SMALL doses until Kompakt arrives.
I know most of the anxiety is caused from the physical technology and the network. I loved making calls on the Mudita Pure, looked forward to it and didn’t experience anxiety.
I hope ‘fingers crossed’ I can do something with Kompakt to reduce the EMF during calls… any suggestions from the Mudita team will be gratefully received. I am thinking of making a little copper thing to place over the antenna area similar to the Pure, and maybe some copper on a homemade case, to filter out some of the EMF, do you think this may work?
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Have you tried air-tube earphones? I have one that I bought online, and it has a very long cable as well as the other benefit of not putting speakers directly in one’s ears.
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Not sure about everyone else, but as a dumbphone enthusiast I think I focus way too much on the impact of technology has on the quality of my interactions rather than the fact that technology has fundamentally warped the types of interactions I have. The most interesting part of the article for me was the analysis of how our current connectivity/communication technologies have transformed the relationships between our “family”, “village”, and “tribe” in different ways.
Family: As much as I believe that smartphones reduce the quality of connection between me and my close friends and family, I do agree with the article’s assertion that people actually spend much more time than ever with their friends and family because of technology. In the past people simply couldn’t text their spouses, children, or friends all day when they were at work or out and about. Smartphones reduce the quality of those nice moments you do get to spend in physical proximity to your loved ones, but it’s hard to argue that the sheer volume of connection with loved ones hasn’t increased dramatically over the last decade.
Tribe: Smartphones and social media have increased our connectivity to people who share similar interests and identities more than ever. For better or for worse, there is no other time in history where I could talk to thousands of LA Clippers fans, Drain Gang fans, chess enthusiasts, dumbphone enthusiasts, etc. every single day.
Village: I think when people talk about technology ruining our connection to others, I think this is the area where smartphones and social media have truly done lots of damage. These days people simply do not talk to each other in shared spaces or join local clubs, where people learn proper emotional regulation and conflict resolution skills. It is simply way too easy to avoid the awkwardness, embarrassment, and conflict that could possibly arise from interactions with local community members.
I think it’s important for our dumbphone community to think about these differences when we advocate for society to have a healthier and more intentional relationship with social media. It’s hard to argue with my friend when he claims that our friend group is much closer together because of Facebook and Discord messaging, and that he is much closer to his linguistics community because of Twitter. It is the connections to our villages that social media has completely ravaged, and I think it is important for us to point out the consequences this has for individuals and society as a whole.
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@area512x I think a lot of digital minimalists focus on reclaiming quality time with close friends and family, but you’re absolutely right, technology has also changed who we interact with.
The ‘village’ point really resonates. It feels like we’ve outsourced casual, everyday socialization (the kind that teaches patience, nuance, and how to deal with discomfort) to highly curated online spaces where everything is optimized for engagement but not necessarily connection.
Here’s an interesting thought: Right now, these AI companions are all over the place & we may think that it’s odd to have a relationship with something/someone that doesn’t exist, however, all the ‘faceless’ interaction we have now, through different social media sites, messengers etc, those basically set the tone for us to accept not having real-life interactions.
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Two Great Points!
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@area512x Thanks for writing this- I enjoyed reading it.
Now throw in celebrity worship, influencers and other advertisers and you have a tornado.
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Yes, I have a set of Airtube and use them for every call, I was so grateful to come upon them and have been using them for years.
If only the end of the wires didn’t converge over the heart, but much closer to the handset and AWAY from the body altogether, this would be much more beneficial, as it is I pop the handset on something so I don’t have to hold it, step away from it as far as possible and then pull the airtube wires away from my body…
I agree, it’s disturbing to me that people call AI ‘she’ or ‘he’, yet they call animals and infants ‘it’. I wonder why it may be, that some people are so very comfortable ascribing human qualities to lines of computer languaging input into computer programs which runs when someone hits the big green START button? The program runs and because of what it does it’s thought of as being intelligent. A program doesn’t have beingness nor intelligence like a human or animal - it’s all an elaborate, complex, illusion. There is no space for nature’s beautiful influence in there. Someone created the program - someone controls the program. They had the START button and I certainly hope they have the big red STOP button…
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I have some as a Swede landed in a small village in the middle of Spain.
There is a local bar in the building where I live. Entering there is a bit the feeling of the sitcom Cheers. Everybody knows me there now after living there for around 3month. When it’s more people it gets into several group topics conversations often talking through or over each other so not really secret stuff.
It most fun an short and not so deep so to speak.
But when the bar is rather empty it changes to a more slow and intimate mode. It’s a bit talk about the food and some current news or local event. And while this is going along it’s often some nature or travel program on the rather big flat screen that low sound is mounted in the corner that we all glance at and semi follows. (Very different from groups that watches football games on it)
No for us few often the talk shift to comment on something in the show and that often spreads out to rather deep and intimate conversation that have or have not ties to the program topic.
A bit the same feeling as one has as a kid outside the school yard where it was running and noisy and people shared comics and toys etc. and some of us sat a bit calmer and studied the poster with the newly introduced yearly ice creams. That could lead to very profound debates.
Both brings up a kind a calm surreal but attractive wibe where people of different styles and entry points intro and extroverts find a connection for a few minutes.
I love and miss such moments as they happen less.
Without phone distraction abd instead it just as a tool to drive the talk and woke media material that is presented openly to all instead of local devices per person to stare at with all this. Maybe we can reclaim those spaces more
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This became kind of extreme in workplaces, I think. An office, for example, is no longer a place where people work together, it’s a place where you survive the day and then flee home. The mobile connection helps to maintain this mental state where you can stay distanced from the other people at the workplace. You can straight out refuse your colleagues as humans, they are just some functional pieces of the workplace.
Now, I think it was like that before smartphones too, but the smartphone in the pocket is a perceived escape route that is always there. You can always stay distanced, the phone will help with that.
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