Could smartphones or tablets replace everything else?

ProtonMailManTheSequel said:
A month or so back I went over to my sister's house for a big family gathering. She's got four kids, three of whom have significant others (all seven were there). We're sitting in her living room--five adults and seven "kids" (ages 17-25--some of whom I had not seen in years or ever) and every single kid--within five minutes--had their "smart phone" out and was staring into it and playing with it the rest of the evening. They were even texting each other--sitting right there in the same living room. So there I (no smart phone, thank you!) was left basically just sitting there being "odd man out" with nothing to do (aside from dinner) for four hours.

I was invited back a couple of days ago for a reprise and declined citing a "prior commitment." You can guess why. If I do come again I am going to bring Shakespeare's complete plays (quite the thick tome as you can imagine) and as soon as the first phone comes out, I'm just going to crack it open and start reading and not put it down or take my face out of it until I'm ready to leave.
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This is why I have a "No Phones" rules if I am hosting a social function. If anyone thinks about violating that rule I show them how I "turn off a phone":

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Its fun to watch people try to re-learn how to actually interact with others and be a human being.
 
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Physical books: maybe

Drawing/painting: hell no. Real painting is one of the greatest joys of life, digital bullshit will never eclipse it.

Cameras: no. even with the advent of digital cameras, a larger sensor size takes better photos, much like larger film formats. The larger the sensor size, the more detailed and high quality your photos are. phone cameras can never have one because of the size constraint. Larger photo sensors have been developing slowly and are still very expensive, a medium format digital camera can be over 10 grand.

TV/DVD: TV blows anyway, streaming has more choice and isn't just trashy bullshit with a few good things peppered in. When tv was new people had the same reaction to it as phones.

Games: most mobile games are bad, but not all of them. I enjoy playing vice city and san andreas on my phone. I've played the newer gta games on console in the past, but the older ones on my phone are just as much fun to me.

Gatherings: lol no everyone hates zoom meetings
 
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No. Try editing an image on your phone and you'll see why. Try playing Titan Quest on your phone.
ProtonMailManTheSequel said:
If you're smart you'll pop the battery and only insert it when you need to use the phone. Otherwise, while you might not be using it, it will be using you.
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Not even laptops let you do that anymore. Are you from the good future?
 
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Agent Abe Caprine said:
No. Try editing an image on your phone and you'll see why. Try playing Titan Quest on your phone.

Not even laptops let you do that anymore. Are you from the good future?
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Well it was 2012 when I last touched a "smart phone," so sadly, I'm afraid it's just that I'm from a never-coming-back past.
 
Frankly, I don't get why so many guys ITT are convinced physical books are going nowhere.

Are physical books better? A trillion times better and that's a fact. Is a stack of books more convenient than a phone especially to read on a plane/train/bus/toilet? Hell to the naw, and therein lies the big huge difference. Speaking from experience, it's been a few years since I've picked up a physical book to read outside of a library and I do read. Nearly everything you could read (worth reading anyway) is available by some means or another and is quiet resistant to bans, being out of print, or snooping people around you (try reading the turner diaries on a municipal bus or train. I dare you.).

Will smartphones replace cameras? As far as point and shoot/consumer cameras go, yeah they pretty much have a long time ago. The last time I saw someone with a point and shoot was a hasidic family on a trip or something (they didn't have smartphones which I found pretty interesting) a year back or so. For anyone who wants to take *good quality* pictures? You'll need a bigger sensor and better lenses. Whatever software phone cameras have to increase depth of field, bokeh, zoom, etc. comes nowhere near what a real camera lens is capable of, certainly in the hands of a skilled photographer. Probably the closest a phone came to a camera in my memory was the Nokia 808 pureview and it's more or less unusable these days.
 
The fact that it seems like solid state electronics are replacing everything doesn't seem to help. Like the world is becoming a "computing substrate" that runs a simulated world or "virtual reality". LED lights seem to be replacing other kinds of lighting - they even simulate candles. Various forms of flash memory (like the USB drive, SD card, and SSD) seem to be replacing all other ways to store media.

At least if one were "mind uploaded" or "Matrix'd" entirly into a simulated world, one could live a "real life" there. But in Current Year, it seems like we're are living more and more in this "uncanny valley" between the physical and digital, where we live like cyborgs interacting with screens all the time.

(related post)
 
ToroidalBoat said:
The fact that it seems like solid state electronics are replacing everything doesn't seem to help. Like the world is becoming a "computing substrate" that runs a simulated world or "virtual reality". LED lights seem to be replacing other kinds of lighting - they even simulate candles. Various forms of flash memory (like the USB drive, SD card, and SSD) seem to be replacing all other ways to store media.

At least if one were "mind uploaded" or "Matrix'd" entirly into a simulated world, one could live a "real life" there. But in Current Year, it seems like we're are living more and more in this "uncanny valley" between the physical and digital, where we live like cyborgs interacting with screens all the time.

(related post)
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SSDs are actually more reliable than HDDs. Also faster. Biggest con of them is the cost of 1TB+ ones. Pretty much all methods of digitally storing media are susceptible to bit rot over time. Only way to avoid this completely is stone tablets.

Then you have to worry about weathering and a stray hammer.
 
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