Honestly, the smartphone boundary sucks. Peak technology was the power of computers and cellphones but not smart phones. I think for those of who liked to be on the computer and internet, the aughts was a golden era that will never be replicated or re-experienced by any other generation.
I think a part of smartphones worsening our lives is that we now have constant distraction devices, which are also constant notification influx and availability devices, which is just not that great for the mind. Especially the availability aspect. Being online before the smartphone tended to be a binary thing. You're either online, or you're offline and unavailable. With smartphones I can send a message or call to anyone, or anyone to me, and the expectation is that that message will be received immediately. Sometimes, even, replied to immediately. You're not available sometimes, but all the time. That sucks.
I think the other part of it is that smartphones have incredibly powerful UX, and I'm sure both Apple and Google have invested ungodly amounts of money in researching UI/UX for these things. So that means the barrier to entry for non-computer-savvy people has plummeted to almost nothing. Having these kinds of people online, IMO, makes being online less fun.
That said, the smartphone as a technology is incredibly powerful. Unfortunately, the computer industry also course-corrected their earlier error with computers and made sure that these devices are also advertising vehicles that you have minimal control over, so smartphones are particularly evil (btw have you heard of our Lord and Savior Linux?)
Peak technology was the power of computers and cellphones but not smart phones.
I'd argue early smart phones should be included with peak. Once everyone had a smart phone, social media became too ubiquitous and everything needed a useless app filled with dark patterns/microtransactions is about when things went on decline.
When the first iPhone was released it didn't even have an app store until iPhone OS 2, so the earliest smart phones were held back the lack of developers, the lack of a way to write software, the time it took to come to some kind of understanding on how to write software for mobile (a brand new paradigm), and the lack of adoption among users.
So yeah, for a couple of years smart phones were a bit of a novelty item. And of course the thing that a lot of armchair nerds really derided them on was the fact that they didn't have physical keys! "You can pry my Blackberry out of my cold dead hands." Imagine trying to make that complaint today.*
*Though the touch screens on the early devices were not as good as on today's phones, so the criticism had a little bit of merit.
My first Android phone, a used Samsung Stratosphere, had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. I remember touch screens being terrible in the halcyon days of early smartphones and having one with a physical keyboard, or at least a 0-9 keypad, was a perk for a time.
When my Stratosphere finally broke in like 2013 or 2014 I was bummed out because there weren't any new phones like it with physical keyboards. But by that time touch screens had gotten better, so a physical keyboard wasn't really needed anymore.
Honestly, the smartphone boundary sucks. Peak technology was the power of computers and cellphones but not smart phones. I think for those of who liked to be on the computer and internet, the aughts was a golden era that will never be replicated or re-experienced by any other generation.
I think a part of smartphones worsening our lives is that we now have constant distraction devices, which are also constant notification influx and availability devices, which is just not that great for the mind. Especially the availability aspect. Being online before the smartphone tended to be a binary thing. You're either online, or you're offline and unavailable. With smartphones I can send a message or call to anyone, or anyone to me, and the expectation is that that message will be received immediately. Sometimes, even, replied to immediately. You're not available sometimes, but all the time. That sucks.
I think the other part of it is that smartphones have incredibly powerful UX, and I'm sure both Apple and Google have invested ungodly amounts of money in researching UI/UX for these things. So that means the barrier to entry for non-computer-savvy people has plummeted to almost nothing. Having these kinds of people online, IMO, makes being online less fun.
That said, the smartphone as a technology is incredibly powerful. Unfortunately, the computer industry also course-corrected their earlier error with computers and made sure that these devices are also advertising vehicles that you have minimal control over, so smartphones are particularly evil (btw have you heard of our Lord and Savior Linux?)
I'd argue early smart phones should be included with peak. Once everyone had a smart phone, social media became too ubiquitous and everything needed a useless app filled with dark patterns/microtransactions is about when things went on decline.
When the first iPhone was released it didn't even have an app store until iPhone OS 2, so the earliest smart phones were held back the lack of developers, the lack of a way to write software, the time it took to come to some kind of understanding on how to write software for mobile (a brand new paradigm), and the lack of adoption among users.
So yeah, for a couple of years smart phones were a bit of a novelty item. And of course the thing that a lot of armchair nerds really derided them on was the fact that they didn't have physical keys! "You can pry my Blackberry out of my cold dead hands." Imagine trying to make that complaint today.*
*Though the touch screens on the early devices were not as good as on today's phones, so the criticism had a little bit of merit.
My first Android phone, a used Samsung Stratosphere, had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. I remember touch screens being terrible in the halcyon days of early smartphones and having one with a physical keyboard, or at least a 0-9 keypad, was a perk for a time.
When my Stratosphere finally broke in like 2013 or 2014 I was bummed out because there weren't any new phones like it with physical keyboards. But by that time touch screens had gotten better, so a physical keyboard wasn't really needed anymore.
Early touchscreens were dogshit. Like 100ms+ of latency and the software was terrible at trying to figure out which link you were tapping, etc