Comment by grecht | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecht | Hacker News Reader

As a young person who was 11 years old 10 years ago, I can't really answer that question. But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity.

Growing up in midst of the rise of smartphones, I just now realized how much time I spent staring at a screen, being distracted by the constant flow of information and the constant need to communicate. And I still am, although I am cutting back on phone usage and senseless browsing. I just made the decision to subscribe to a weekly printed newspaper instead of fanatically checking the news every day (or sometimes every hour).

Now I don't have any data on this, but I'm observing that people start noticing the downsides of digital things and their interfaces, and start going back to well-tried "analog" stuff. So many blog posts about when to turn your phone off, apps that let you plant trees for not being on your phone (https://www.forestapp.cc/en/), products like the bullet journal (https://bulletjournal.com/) and feature reduced "dumbphones", etc.

It seems to me that this hype of making everything digital, from blackboards and car interfaces to home automation systems and coffee machines, happened without ever paying any thoughts to the real world profits gained by this. A prime example: Teachers use maybe 10% of the functions on an "ActiveBoard" (digital blackboards you can "write" on), spend a lot of time trying to get basic functions to work or calibrating the pen, and their writing looks crooked. Chalk on a blackboard worked just fine before that, the "interface" is intuitive, and the writing (depending on the teacher) more readable, and it didn't cost a couple thousand € of taxpayer money. I'd argue that for the most part ActiveBoards resulted in a big productivity loss in schools.

> But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity.

When I'm teaching, I'd love to bring a hammer and smash phones students check them. They're doing it as a way to avoid thinking, as a way to always have someone entertain them. They're addicted and don't know it.

> I'd argue that for the most part ActiveBoards resulted in a big productivity loss in schools.

We don't use them here, but not that long ago, "dedicated" teachers used PowerPoint. I've visited universities where they'd put faculty in classrooms where the only way to "teach" was to use PowerPoint. No amount of technology changes the fact that you have to communicate.

I believe the only useful think we can teach is how to learn (because you can't teach people, you can only motivate to learn - they need to do the work themselves).

So regardless of your setting (kindergarden through university) - demonstrating good ways to study is worthwhile.

Demanding a classroom free of smartphones / social media is one very basic step in that direction.

You might be the first person to help a student realize that they are still smarter than their smart phone - and that they are in control, not it.

Eh, before powerpoint, there were printed overhead transparencies. Before transparencies, there were teachers who spent their entire lecture writing directly from notes to the blackboard.

Rote teachers are rote teachers.

I LOVED transparencies. The teacher brought it to the classroom if was not already there, and plugged it in. And there you have the presentation. Sit and wait while a humanities professor is dabbling with the computer corpse installed in the classroom and the projector that projects nearly a diamond shaped image onto a random place on the wall, until they just give up after some dozen of minutes. Or they set up edmodo and send you PPTXs instead of proper notes, and you need to watch stupid animations until you can get to see that 64th page with the paragraph you need to read, hopefully not coloured stupidly or not illegible in another way due to an incompatibility with the thing on the phone that renders those files, so that you don't have to wait until you go back home to look at the thing on the computer.

I recently discovered downloading library books onto phones, have you looked into that?

I live in a city and don’t have enough cash/room for hundreds of books in my apartment and don’t usually have time to reach a library branch. But this way I get/return books instantly and I don’t have to lug anything around on the subway. I read ebooks faster for some reason, too. No way to drop the book in a puddle or pour coffee on it. And finishing a library book on my phone is one of the rare times I feel like I actually used my phone to get something done.

I love tech when it cuts down on the number of objects I need to own or schlep.

I like to at least think that, if I were starting over today, I'd have a lot less clutter and physical "stuff." I think there's a mindset along the lines of "If I'm going to have a bunch of books, CDs, other stuff that today can all be digitized, then what's another ton or so of physical artifacts to lug around.

Not that I would necessarily behave that way but it's at least wishful thinking.

As a godforsaken millennial in the big American city, I do see us spending more on experiences, food, memberships, digital content, locations — things that you can’t touch — than objects. This has implications for the overall productivity of society, maybe? We produce less stuff that goes unused in attics and garages. What we do produce, we’re more likely to consume immediately or scale trivially. So less work on stuff no one will ever use. Maybe. Theory.

It’s purely anecdotal, yes. I think research papers and brand acquisition patterns can substantiate the claims we spend more on fancy food.

It could be our tastes which have been informed by analog and minimalist culture movements which I first noticed in the mid-2000s.

It could also be because we don’t have much disposable income and since home ownership is so hard where the jobs are (big cities) those with money still have nowhere to put stuff.

>since home ownership is so hard

I don't know the numbers but I doubt that home ownership has ever been all that common among twenty-somethings. And I fully expect that many current twenty-somethings will end up moving out of the city to get more space once they have families. That said, the interest in living in/near the urban cores of certain large cities is a relatively recent phenomenon. When I entered the tech industry in the mid-eighties, almost no one in my local cohort lived in the city (Boston/Cambridge) which indeed was still losing population and tech jobs to suburban/exurban areas.

Although Boston/Cambridge have long been quite good for food, culture, etc., I think it's fair to say that much of that sort of thing has been significantly upleveled over the past 20-30 years.

We just moved to a much smaller house. I have 5 boxes, probably 100kg, full of CDs and DVDs that I am ready to get rid of. Don't want to throw them out but rather have them put to a good use (but does anyone use them anymore?).

The hype of making everything digital stems from what I like to call the "oh wow cool" culture. When we see something interesting (and a big wall mounted screen that you can touch and interact, or a watch which can show you the weather is interesting), we tend to not consider its real word implications and usefulness.

> I just made the decision to subscribe to a weekly printed newspaper instead of fanatically checking the news every day (or sometimes every hour).

I'm one step ahead of you. I'm currently unsubscribing from my weekly printed newspaper to have more time to read books. :)

That said, I can totally recommend to everyone to get your news from a weekly newspaper instead of a daily or hourly medium like TV or the web. A weekly newspaper has just enough distance from the breaking news to provide a good balance between reporting and analysis/commentary.

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