I don't need data

We got a mailer from T-mobile this month saying that our plan was going to be upgraded and giving us a broken link to info about the upgrade.  Very helpful.  NWC is also on the market for a new phone; he wants "anything without a big screen," a.k.a. not a smartphone.  Thus, I've been looking at cell provider websites lately and I've been really sad that there are basically no plans without data.

So far this month, I've talked for 12 minutes and used 8 text messages; NWC is beating me at 48 minutes and 46 text messages.  1000 minutes is the minimum we can get with T-mobile; it used to be 500, but all we really need is 200.  Our monthly bill for this pittance of use?  $73.13.  It's a complete rip off, but I haven't been able to find anything cheaper with the main providers.  Cell phone plans are increasingly including things that I don't want or need as part of their cheapest plans, raising their rates on the low-end products and forcing people into using smartphones.  You have to hunt for alternatives.

I'm seriously considering changing to Consumer Cellular, where our monthly bill would be reduced to $35 for 600 minutes and 1000 text messages.  There are other obscure phone plan providers, but theirs seems to be a good match for us.  I'm also amused that their target demographic is elderly and retired persons.  We won't get in-network benefits, but we weren't really using them anyway as we make our long calls via Google Hangouts.

Do you know anyone that uses a non-mainstream cellular provider?  How are they?

phone-related commercials + rant

First, there's the Sprint Unlimited commercial.  They feed you lines about how human experience is spectacular, and why would you cap that?  Your phone can capture the entire gallery of humanity, the narrator says, and he needs to upload all of it.  Then he says "I have the need--no, I have the right to be unlimited."

No, actually, you don't have the right to an unlimited cell phone plan.   You aren't entitled to anything when it comes to that type of discretionary technology.  You don't even have the right to read technical papers that your tax payer money has funded.  And it's great that your phone can capture everything (which I'm not so sure about, but let's run with it), however, unless you're working on a documentary, you should probably live your life rather than record it all.

Then, we have the Droid DNA ad, showing a man's blood, DNA, and neurons being taken over by his cell phone.  It culminates in the line: "It's not an upgrade to your phone, it's an upgrade to yourself."

No, no, it's not.  Frankly, being obsessed with using your phone might downgrade you as a person.  My question is: why is texting or browsing the web in the social context even okay to begin with?  You wouldn't take a non-urgent phone call in the middle of a conversation with another person, nor would you open up a newspaper in the middle of a class.  Why are people so rude?

Etiquette aside, why are we obsessed with the online world?  Why do people have the patience to use Pinterest regularly?  How do people the have the endurance to tweet or check for Facebook updates continually?  To me, so much of it feels like noise that's getting in the way of the things that I really care about.

I love the internet.  I love being able to look things up, sync my files, and blog.  But I have no desire to be constantly plugged into the online world. I have no desire for a smartphone. I love making things more than reading about making things. I love working uninterrupted. I love paper maps, even though I can get terribly lost. Getting lost is half the fun.

So while the age threshold for people with nicer phones than me drops into the tweens, I'm declaring my right to limit myself.  I don't need unlimited online access, and I'm more productive, learn more, and am more engaged with the world without it.

Three Years Late: A Lengthy Review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism, Part 1

I rarely read books soon after they are published. Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism had been sitting on my shelf for at least two years, recommended to me by my mother, before I finally picked it up. Helprin's Winter's Tale was one of the most delicious novels I've ever encountered, mostly because his writing is simply beautiful; thus, I hoped for good things from this manifesto. I did indeed find it to be enlightening in some ways, but in others it disappointed me; I'll attempt to tease apart the facets of my reaction in a series of posts.


The Acceleration of Tranquility

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Helprin begins by introducing us to two characters, one living in 2028 and the other in 1908, and asks you to consider which example draws your attraction, which life you would rather live.  This was all a little ironic because I'm also reading Kaku's Physics of the Future, which makes many of the same predictions for the future, but more on that at a later point.

I think that Helprin, knowingly or not, sets the reader up to like the second character and lifestyle with implications of infidelity with the first, among other things.  Setting aside the inherent bias of the setup, I still side with author in his favor for the second, slower life, which is unsurprising given my generally retrogrouch attitude.  He goes on to explore the benefits of each: medicine is an obvious example in favor of the 2028 life, the ease of achieving rest and contemplation for the second.

An aside: if these the ideas sound at least vaguely interesting to you, please read the first chapter of the actual book, which my summary cannot do justice.

His thesis, at least as I perceive it, is that the pace of life is speeding up beyond the pace that is healthy for man, but that we cannot simply throw out technology because it does too much good to be cast away.  To me, the most insightful paragraph of the entire book was his proposition on how to move forward, given knowledge of both ways of life:

Requisite, I believe, for correcting the first paradigm until it approximates the second, and bringing to the second (without jeopardizing it) the excitements and benefits of the first, are the discipline, values, and clarity of vision that tend to flourish as we grapple with necessity and austerity, and tend to disappear when by virtue of our ingenuity we float free of them.

Disciple, values, and clarity of thought.  It's really quite simple: values are the foundational ideas from which we form our lives.  Clarity of thought turn values into blueprints, or unambiguous plans. Disciple allows us to actually build our lives from those blueprints.

While the majority of Helprin's book covers other material, this was its profound point.  The questions this point leads to are: What should our values be?  And then, how do we learn to achieve clarity of thought and discipline?  Knowledge of their necessity helps, but like all virtues, acquiring them is like catching a fish with your bare hands.

Continue to Part 2

bit-wise

I'm taking a class just for fun this semester, because its title nerd-sniped me in an instant: The Future of the Book.  So far, we've read a motley of opinion pieces and delved into technophilosophy, which is a word I just made up.  I've discovered that I am a bit of a luddite, or rather, I've discovered how much of a luddite I really am.  I'll give up my bound paper books when my ashes are mingled with N's under an oak tree.

Of more general interest than ashes, I read two articles that resonated with me, and I thought I'd share them.  The first, The Future of the Book, shares several topics with those mentioned in my class.  There's a lot to discuss about the future of books, libraries, the privilege inherent in the shift to digital media, expectations of society as that shift happens, how much things will change and how fast, what one's ideal future look like, and how to contribute to or shape that future.  But since I'm thoroughly opinionated in class, I think I won't bother to rehash everything here, at least not right now.

The second, Is Google Making Us Stupid? talks about the digital age more generally.  Carr writes, "what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation," and I feel it as well.  Ironically enough, I couldn't even finish the article on the first go-round.  I have a hard time reading novels just sitting down at home--it's much easier when I'm on a bus or walking somewhere.  My prayers are generally shorter and less meditative.  Certainly not everything can be blamed on the Internet, but no matter: there's nothing wrong with culling the excess time spent online.  At the very least it makes more time for those other things.

I've committed to spending less time online in lots of different ways over the past few years.  My first year out of college, I had no internet at home, which was amazing.   I've put restrictive apps on my browsers, made mutual promises with N, intentionally left my laptop off or at home for extended periods of time, but the Internet still calls.  It's like sugar for the brain.

So with that, I'll turn off my computer for the night.