💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20190808 captured on 2023-01-29 at 03:59:26.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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My sister-in-law called today to ask me to look for a phone for my niece. She mentioned it a while ago and at that point, anything was fine, as long as it made calls and texts. The niece was not to have a data plan, so it seemed like I could find a new phone for a reasonable price quite easily. But today, the criteria were different. My niece *needs* an iPhone, because if she doesn't have one, she'll be excluded from her friends' group chats. She also *needs* data so she can look up bus schedules. So I looked up the price of a new iPhone and nearly iVomited. I believe my sister-in-law was a little taken aback as well. I could hear a slight gasp on the other end of the line. Later, I went on eBay and found that you can get a used iPhone SE for a little over $100. I suspect that the SE won't get the next iOS update, but it should be useful for as long as it will last in the hands of a young girl (everywhere I look, people are making do with cracked screens....) But the thing that really hit me was that the iPhone (and especially iMessage) had become the defining mechanism of social cliques. Without an iPhone, my niece would be an outsider. If I wasn't around, searching eBay for a phone, my sister-in-law probably would have just bit the bullet and paid for a phone she really couldn't afford, just to make sure her kid wasn't ostracized. I think -- but I don't know because I don't have kids -- this would have been one of those points where I would have just said, "we're not doing that." I was raised by quite old-school parents (and an even older-school grandma) and they wouldn't have batted an eye in refusing to pay for such a thing. I know, though, that many people must be caving in and it bothers me. I think that might be why I'm such a fan of retro-tech. I love getting as much out of old things as possible. I also like simplicity and hate waste (Grandma went through the Great Depression and we saved *all* the damn leftovers). I think it's because of that mentality that I've kept old cars on the road, repaired old cell phones for fun, fixed up an old house, and I'm typing this on a ThinkPad R500 that's been upgraded almost as far as is possible. Sometimes I think that the people who buy everything up to the limits of their credit are the smart ones. You know? You only live once and the creditors can't collect once you're dead. Meanwhile, you get to consume to your heart's content and be in the in-crowd. But I know that I could never live like that. I don't like how it feels. In any case, while I know that old will rarely be cool among the general public, at least in the gopherverse my clique (are we that?) shares an appreciation for simplicity, re-use, and repair, which is nice. * * * You're making me think a lot, phloggers. Among the pieces that I've really enjoyed lately are Yargo's piece on digital minimalism and dgold's "We Have Always Been at War" (I really need to find another Orwell work to read) and "Reformed Rational Calendar." I think the extra summer half-month *has* to be called "Thermidor". There's no other historically responsible choice! * * * A news tidbt that might be of interest: the NY Public Library has discovered that the copyright to a great number of books published prior to 1964 has expired. You may find a lot more books available through Project Gutenberg and other sites shortly. Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e3e/millions-of-books-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain-you-can-download-them-free