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Comment by SiVal | Hacker News Reader

"I am sure everyone on HN moved [from computers to smartphones] quickly"

I may be wrong, but I suspect you have that backwards. My guess is that at least older HNers were slower to shift from powerful but complex creation tools (computers) to easy consumption toys (smartphones) designed for consumers who found computers with files and folders just too darned complicated to use. Until good, portable mapping and good-enough cameras came along, I had no use for the "smart" features of a phone that were vastly inferior to the smart features of a real computer. For a long time, all I needed from a phone was the phone, which a small flip phone handled just fine. For anything "smart", I used the laptop & real camera in my backpack.

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I suspect everyone is wrong, but we're all subject to an availability bias.

We assume that things we actively notice other people doing in public are representative of what everyone (or everyone in some category to which we've assigned that person) is doing. We don't notice all the people not engaging in that behavior because they're not noteworthy.

==We assume that things we actively notice other people doing in public are representative of what everyone (or everyone in some category to which we've assigned that person) is doing. We don't notice all the people not engaging in that behavior because they're not noteworthy.==

Doesn’t this comment include it’s own set of biases?

Such as?

I think that what they were getting at is that people noticing and commenting on things is more noticeable than people not doing so.

Which would imply that there's a tendency to notice the noticing more than the not noticing, and, as a consequence, over-estimate how often people do it.

It's a good point.

I really dislike the 'consumption device' label, to me it seems lazily dismissive and missing the point. Smartphones, like phones, are primarily communication devices and communication is an active process. Texting/chat, email, audio calls, Twitter, Slack, Teams, Reddit, facebook, Discord, snapchat, etc, etc are all interactive communications media people use to create content for as well as 'consume'. Yes of course they're also used to watch videos and memes, read web sites, listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Sure, but active engagement is the killer feature for these things.

Go to any commuter train on a Monday morning and look what every last one of those people seated in the car are doing.

They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption. It's just a proper observation.

> They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption.

This is also probably one of the reasons TikTok took off; it allows high quality content creation via smartphone that anyone can do.

Crashing before consuming is also why personal tech in the 80s and 90s had a very different kind of following.

If there billions of consumers and just 1 in 1000 creates something then we have millions of creators

That's neither relevant to the point under discussion (the primary function of the device), nor a valid defense of the smartphone (which should be judged on its intrinsic merits, not whether a tiny fraction of people manage to use it productively solely as a statistical consequence of Earth's vast population).

Of course they get used for that, but I think it's a mistake saying that because they are consumption devices therefore HN crowd would have limited use for them. That's not how that works. In two different people's hands the same device brings completely different value. I got an iPhone in 2008 and since then have used them heavily as communications devices and that's where the main value for me is.

The same goes for the comment about iPhones being 'designed for consumers'. They were designed to be easy to use, but that in no way means they were under powered or less capable because of those design considerations. Again, that's not how that works. Powerful or easy to use is a false dichotomy.

They're incredibly powerful tools and mistaking a major, even the major use case for being defining of the tool (therefore everyone uses it this way, or therefore that's where the main value lies, or therefore these people here wouldn't use them) is fallacious. There are 'influencers' who have built fortunes almost entirely on their phones.

> Smartphones, like phones, are primarily communication devices and communication is an active process.

Yeah… no. Maybe for some people, but I primarily use it as a consumption device. But then, I don’t use social media, I don’t answer my phone (I listen to voicemails once a day and choose whether I want to respond or not). I don’t use any work apps on my phone, like slack.

The real irony of the smartphone situation is that if you are older HNer, you will return to flip phone, real camera and laptop and never go any further, until proven FOSS solution is available on the market. Smartphones were designed from the get go as a surveillance economy devices, catered to minimal the computing needs of the mass audience.:)

Down-voting cannot remove the true of the statement.

Using corporate censored devices is not making you free or enlightened in any way. We are approaching real danger in the tech community where criticism and non-conforming to the gospel trends are becoming the norm.

You are very right.

Once you are used to the power/freedom available on a Laptop/Desktop Computer you could never get comfortable with the restrictions on a Smartphone. The latter is for less tech-savvy people and almost always used as a media consumption device.

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