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Thread: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

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    Default Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    I came across this article titled "Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?" and I could not help but be curious.

    This foolish answer seems to actually have some merit!

    What's happening is people are turning their phones to grayscale to kind of "combat their brain programming". It's kind of brilliant and ironic at the same time. I recall this being used in some books on tape I had regarding NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)

    The premise is, color makes things more attractive. Let's say you're a large person and you want to be smaller. Picture salad in your head with vibrant greens, maybe do a close up, pretty soon that salad will look delicious. Then think of a hamburger, but make it gray. Move it farther away, unappealing.

    A couple of quotes from the article:

    Quote After going to grayscale, I’m not a different person all of a sudden, but I feel more in control of my phone, which now looks like a tool rather than a toy.
    Quote The switch made me realize, in a tangible way, that I still have a little choice here.

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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    There's an excellent thread about this, here:
    On that thread, I posted:
    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Very closely related, and recommended:

    Nancy Colier on Coast to Coast (25 Jan 2017) discussing our reliance on technology. Many of the social and developmental problems that she highlights overlap directly with this short Tucker Carlson interview.
    1. http://projectavalon.net/Coast_to_Co...017_Hour_1.mp3
    2. http://projectavalon.net/Coast_to_Co...017_Hour_2.mp3
    I have a very dumb phone, with 15-year old technology. I use it to tell the time occasionally, and make the odd call when I'm in town. It's switched off almost all the time. I fully intend to keep it that way.

    For closely related reasons, I don't do Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or WhatsApp, and only communicate via Skype, e-mail (just one account) and the Forum. Absolutely nothing else.

    In comparison with some people I see or have heard about, I do think I'm saner as a result, more connected with the real world, and healthier in every way.

    I have to say, I do genuinely fear for the dehumanized, unnatural future that we all seem to be accelerating towards.

    Either no-one's at the wheel, or they do NOT have our best interests at heart.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Destroyed is kind of harsh, I get it with the headlines though. Just feels like that word punched me in the guts.

    My last phone was dumb, it was a Blackberry and it couldn't play a video to save it's life but boy could I type easily on it! My new one is "Smart" but just for work and making a scattered call, I can see how younger ones can get sucked into the new phones though.

    I feel bad for them. I don't think so much multitasking is good for the mind, and I'm willing to bet that's been said before.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?



    Here in Taiwan I have an old phone like the one pictured. I tell people it's from the Tang dynasty. It has no internet, only an old LCD digital screen, even more basic than the one pictured. When they ask why I don't have a smartphone I tell them they're a distraction and a waste of time, and I mime people hunched over their phones with crooked necks. I only take it out when I meet someone. Apart from that, I use a desktop.

    A minor inconvenience is that it costs people to text me, which is annoying, but that's life.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Daozen (here)
    Here in Taiwan I have an old phone like the one pictured.
    What a cute phone! I love the design, looks nice and solid. If someone pulled one of those out around me, I'd be instantly impressed.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by petra (here)
    Quote Posted by Daozen (here)
    Here in Taiwan I have an old phone like the one pictured.
    What a cute phone! I love the design, looks nice and solid. If someone pulled one of those out around me, I'd be instantly impressed.
    Be impressed! This really is my phone. I took the photo a couple of minutes ago.


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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Quote Posted by petra (here)
    Quote Posted by Daozen (here)
    Here in Taiwan I have an old phone like the one pictured.
    What a cute phone! I love the design, looks nice and solid. If someone pulled one of those out around me, I'd be instantly impressed.
    Be impressed! This really is my phone. I took the photo a couple of minutes ago.


    Someone, somewhere, on some thread in some forum is now starting a thread titled "Bill Ryan is a time traveller from the year 2000"...and they're offering up this post as proof

    Nice thread Petra! I think we get used to what we have, and over time will tolerate nothing less. If you're used to travelling around the earth at the speed of light, travelling at the speed of sound will elicit grumbles from a moody, spoiled group of passengers. It wouldn't matter if you reminded them how it used to be way back in 2018, when we travelled in jet planes that took hours to arrive at our destinations.

    Yep, this new tech is making us a spoiled bunch. Me included. Before I got this fancy sumsung phone, I was operating off a phone with an actual keyboard LOL, with actual buttons no less (gasp!). And when I arrived at Best Buy to get on this family plan with my sister, I practically begged them to find a way to get me the same phone(mine had crapped out). They thought I was nuts. They kept insisting I take the *free* s6 that came with the plan, and were utterly befuddled when I initially refused...

    And I would have been perfectly content with that old phone, even now, had I not been introduced to this new one that I currently use. See now I've experienced something better, and it's poisoned my soul LOL. Now I will tolerate nothing less.

    If we went back to basic phones, it might just lessen phone addiction, but only after a 10 year temper tantrum from a planet full of spoiled, grown adults whose souls have already been corrupted by years of technological entitlement. Meanwhile neck health would improve by leaps n bounds
    Last edited by Mike; 17th January 2018 at 03:49.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Hi petra, that is very true and it is a fantastic way to get rid of Smartphone addictions.
    I heard from somewhere which might be true:
    The Mayan calendar ends at 2012 doesn't depict doomsday is on 2012. It just means that humanity after 2012 will be very degraded and lost connection to mother nature and the universe. The Iphone was invented in 2007 and then its popularity rises, but many still prefer dumbphones because it is expensive. On 2009 Samsung seizes the opportunity by releasing more affordable smartphones. By 2012, many people have smartphones and Phone addiction is rising exponentially.
    Many look at phones instead of mother nature. Accidents happen everywhere due to people focusing on the phones than what is going-on around them. Human's perception has been lowered dramatically. Worst of all, most of the people seek for entertainments on the phone than truly important information.

    However, it is good that many are awaken now and trying to help others as well. We always have hopes~~


    P.S. If your families or friends just got a new better and faster smartphone, don't congratulate them but warn them about deeper phone addiction. Who knows one day, you might save them from an accident.
    Last edited by Leonard; 17th January 2018 at 06:52.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

    Be impressed! This really is my phone. I took the photo a couple of minutes ago.

    How did you took this photo Bill? Maybe with that other smartphone you have?

    I use a smart phone but I do not feel the effect of addiction more than before when I used a stupid phone and spent hours on a laptop or similar computor.. the device is in this case irrelevant and the effect is the same.
    The problem is the time spent staring at a screen of some sort..
    Is every mind connected to form a peer to peer network that creates the illusion of a shared reality, making the appearance of material reality a simulation created through shared beliefs?

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    I have never had a smartphone. I have what I call a drug phone. The kind you buy from the dollar store. You buy minutes as you need them. It doesn't work in the country and I never use it.

    When the internet guy came out, he told me to text him with any issues I had. I told him I couldn't text and didn't have that kind of phone.

    He looked stunned for a minute and said "I've never met anyone who didn't have a phone." I sh*t you not.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Isserley (here)
    How did you took this photo Bill? Maybe with that other smartphone you have?
    I used an old-fashioned thing called a CAMERA.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    my cell is older than Bill's [phone] looks... ;-)

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    The very simple and difficult answer to phone addiction is to gradually and systematically increase the distance between oneself and the phone If it isn't in easy reach, we can't reward the "pick up phone, look at phone, use it, put it down" response. That's a conditioned response that we can extinguish ourselves.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    I still have my old 90's flip phone! I'm smart enough....don't need a Smart Phone!!


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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    I like the grayscale idea! I just did it to my phone. I have a fancy one for my work, but it does distract me at other times! I do find just turning it off and leaving it in the other room when I am not working is effective. By definition, just being here on Project Avalon means we are more electronically connected than some humans, although probably less connected than most in the First World. In the summer, I can leave the computer and phone behind because I have summers off from work. I am sure there must be a bunch of enlightened people who have totally unplugged, and we just don't hear from them here on Avalon. Although, I could be imagining this, as having traveled far and wide, I have found that there are fewer enlightened people than I dreamed of when I was a teenager.

    One thing that surprises me is that some seniors have become addicted. My own mother couldn't care less about her flip phone and mostly uses it for emergency phone calls. However, my uncle who is even older than her (around 80), has a sound go off whenever he gets an email and actually stops what he is doing to check the email. It is quite a sight to behold!
    There's no time like the present.

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Villival (here)
    He looked stunned for a minute and said "I've never met anyone who didn't have a phone." I sh*t you not.
    Now that's very impressive! You actually shocked the phone guy I laughed about "drug phone" too.... I saw an actual drug phone before, and it looked like it had been through some kind of war. Cracked screen, all full of dirt, pieces missing et cetera :]

    That was kind of like my calculator in high school. I used a hand me down scientific calculator from my dad, and he was a machinist. It was the filthiest calculator ever, all full of greasy finger prints ha ha

    Quote Posted by Merry Mom (here)
    I like the grayscale idea! I just did it to my phone. I have a fancy one for my work, but it does distract me at other times!
    Me too! I wasn't going to bother since I am not having trouble with it, but it's so much prettier now in grayscale! I think this might be having the opposite effect as intended ha ha... I doubt the gray is going to make me want to use it more though. I just like my phone more, now that it's gray.

    Quote Posted by Mike (here)
    I think we get used to what we have, and over time will tolerate nothing less.
    Quite right! Now that I have a car, I'm not ever going back to the bus if I can help it

    I wonder sometimes... what if texting was invented first, before voice calls? Would we all be like "holy crap we can talk to each other now!" and abandon the texting? We'll never know, but I wonder anyway

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    There's an excellent thread about this, here:
    This is a very old concept that has come up over the years...

    It was only around 100 years ago when the News Paper was accused of destroying social interactions in society.





    I don't have a retro phone, I have one of these:


    I leave the ringer on silent (not a fan of carrying around an electronic leash, so this helps.. I only check it when it's convenient); have about 500 books loaded on it and some music for when I work in the yard. All media I've created stems from the camera and mic on my phone (every video I've put up on youtube was shot from my phone); it's a tool to me I don't think it's the tool that is the problem. Like with addiction, it's not the substance, it's the user; it's never the tool that is the issue, it's always us.
    Last edited by TargeT; 18th January 2018 at 19:37.
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    Wink Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Impossible level of Candy Crush has become more impossible now that I can't see the color of the bombs!

    It's about time I stopped playing this Score a point for gray scale! PS: Screenshots are still color. I made this one gray manually
    Attached Images  

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    it's never the tool that is the issue, it's always us.
    Exactly what I was thinking but couldn't express it so well
    Is every mind connected to form a peer to peer network that creates the illusion of a shared reality, making the appearance of material reality a simulation created through shared beliefs?

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    Default Re: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?

    Quote Posted by Isserley (here)
    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    it's never the tool that is the issue, it's always us.
    Exactly what I was thinking but couldn't express it so well
    Of course - I mean, how could it be any other way?

    From my phone's point of view... I am the one that's a tool ;-)

    Isserley - your signature is great! I love it. What kind of idiot would play a rigged game? Not me, that's who

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