Listener comments!
🤖
♥
:
Mark! Techtonellicommunicators!
:
Evening Mark and all Technoids here gathered.
♥
:
i'm excited for this show! as the only 15 year old i know who makes the conscious choice not to have a cell phone, i must say i enjoy the weekly rant. keep it up!
🤖
♥
:
Good evening Mark Hurst and all!!!
♥
:
Good evening Mark and techno people.
🤖
♥
:
Hey, Mark, Techyons.
🤖
♥
:
Hi Mark and techtoniques!
🤖
♥
:
Hello, Mark and phonies! TV commercials are beckoning people to download tax preparation apps and do their taxes on their phones. Seems like a wacky concept to me.
♥
:
↳
Ken From Hyde Park @6:05
what? of course not. what a great idea. it'll be so much easier now on your phone.
♥
:
We can light black candles and make fun of them.
Beyond that, I have no idea.
:
Handy gets Producer credit.
🤖
♥
:
Glad this worked out! As soon as I saw August's work, I figured it was a match made in serious-attention heaven.
♥
:
↳
Ken From Hyde Park @6:05
I have actually done my taxes on my phone one year. I was shocked it worked.
♥
:
Nice rec. Handy!
:
I think it even goes past that. We’ve lived in a luxury vs survival society for so long now our reality spectrum is completely askew
:
Great interview! Very excited
♥
:
Hallo there!
🤖
♥
:
Hello Mark, luddites
:
Hello Mark, Technocrats & Technocrits!
This topic always gets me coming back here for conversation. Ironically, I've been doing without a smartphone (or any kind of mobile phone, for that matter) for the last several months (which is about the same time I've last commented here, coincidentally). Likely won't be making a final decision on a newphone until after I've reviewed tonight's installment.
:
The other side of that is that people born into cell phones don’t have any perspective of what life could be like without it. We have 30-40 more years of people who were alive before them but after that all of history will be rewritten
🤖
♥
:
I'm here for this !
:
I love that August is also an artist - which makes total sense that she's anti smartphone.
🤖
♥
:
Does anyone have their face buried in a newspaper?
:
Anyone else notice Nick Siriani holding his young son in his arms post-game and his son was holding a smartphone?
:
This is so weird to me. I think about what technology makes us lose constantly. As far as what we gain from it? I mean, nothing of substance.
:
I’m out on the streets of NyC, listening to the show!
🤖
♥
:
I was walking out of the supermarket the other day and the guy walking in front of me was, in agitation, talking to himself, or his bluetooth device. There's something else we lose, the ability to confidently identify who is having a legitimate conversation and who is insane.
:
I read magazines on the train. I'm usually the only person.
:
I chose to stasis-grade with my 2012 PowerBook 17 inch with cd drive and iTunes. Stuck with it through motherboard failure, and cd drive failure…..now the big browsers don’t support its old OS. Never had a computer that succeeded it. For a certain old set of tasks i keep a 2004 PowerBook on hand, had to procure a circa 1984 printer just to print stuff out.
🤖
♥
:
I used to take advantage of teh zombie-like state of train riders to sketch them . I KNOW - I WAS VIOLATING THEIR PRIVACY.
:
↳
ultradamno @6:15
I think this a lot
:
That shared book-reading experience never happens to me now, on the bus/elevated light rapid transit. I do bring a print book with me and I do read it as best I can, even when I have to stand in a public transit bus/car.
:
↳
ultradamno @6:15
There’s nothing insane about talking to yourself. It’s very healthy and helps you organize your thoughts.
♥
:
the other kids are all phone zombies now. it's hard to relate.
🤖
♥
:
↳
GC in Oakland @6:15
I have 2 busted 17" MacBooks. 17" rules! But now I have a 16", not such a sacrifice.
:
Park your car without a phone? Crazy.
:
Regarding requiring surveillance phones… Macy’s got rid of the store map and just has a QR code to download their app. I just needed to find the bathroom!!!
🤖
♥
:
↳
Sam @6:16
Come on, man.
🤖
♥
:
Never had a cell phone here.
:
I sometimes keep track of the phone zombies I see around my neighborhood - but I often lose count after a while. Too many.
♥
:
To what problem is this technology designed to solve
♥
:
I first started riding NJ Transit since the 1980s… Folks have always had their heads buried in something… newspapers, books, work stuff… Sure, folks are burying their heads in tracking devices now, and that’s uncool, but the train was never this social experience of folks having spontaneous conversations.
♥
:
↳
Andres @6:17
to use the parking meters you have to download the app.
🤖
♥
:
Yes, being ONE with another NON headphoner or NON phoner, but I’ve not spoken with that other person. Maybe I will now.
:
One thing you miss if you wear headphones on the train are the rare moments when the conductor comes on the speaker and says something really funny, like calling it the G for Groovy Train. When it happens and I’m the only one noticing and laughing I feel so sad.
:
i started listening to music on my headphones on the train a lot so i don't need to listen to everyone else who is playing tiktok videos out loud.
♥
:
↳
Mike Sin @6:18
Yeah I used to have a walkman, listening to my cassettes on the train, I don't see much difference.
:
I prefer it when people use their headphones to listen to audio on their devices to people sitting next or behind me and listening to their audio at high volume without my consent.
:
SO happy to hear this.
♥
:
the other day i was in a waiting room and this woman was swiping through things on her phone. OUT LOUD. it was so annoying to hear the beginning of something just get cut off. but i'm so mad about people's attention spans nowadays! it's like you're so obsessed with what comes next that you're just swiping and swiping and swiping!
:
I stopped listening to music on the train once I got a phone that didn’t have a plug for my old headphones. And now that I’m used to real life and situational awareness I can never go back to blocking out the world.
:
↳
hectic @6:16
So why try? Follow my example: Keep yourself out of their collective radar. Take your observation as a sign that you're unique and know better than to waste your time with things you can't relate to. (Just try to avoid talking about it to others unless they feel you).
:
I stop scrolling: I rarely do
♥
:
Not to mention the phone being a disease vector! Reddit on the toilet, anyone?? :)
♥
:
This chat stream is the only "social media" I participate in. I saw this future, that all these systems would amplify negativity, not even realizing the algorithmic aspect to it. I am deep into tech (CAD engineer) but wall the nonsense off. And read only vetted news.
♥
:
Life is what I say it is
♥
:
↳
A2B @6:24
yeah, i used to complain about the internet with other kids but they didn't enjoy that. so now i just talk about other stuff with them and it can be interesting. i just wish lots of them would stop wasting their time on them, you know? i'm trying to accept that i'm just more aware of this than them.
:
this isn't tech-averse but it is surveillance-averse: I retreated to command-line pubnix environment. I had a nice IRC session with a half-dozen people, I am microblogging without angry reply-guys or others' doomy boosts. Slower and smaller, when I can't go out and engage in meatspace
♥
:
↳
PaulRobeson1925 @6:27
History is what I say it is
♥
:
↳
PaulRobeson1925 @6:28
Are you vetted?
:
I'm on Instagram trying to find humans.
It makes me so happy tho so I am putting it down more
IT also
Ruined my eyes working on the phone
:
SO UNHAPPY lol
🤖
♥
:
The productivity advances in workplace tech over the last 50 years just has turned into more uncompensated labor.
:
the hardest part of jumping off technology: it can be really hard to find the same kind of support in real life
♥
:
↳
Song:
"Interview with August Lamm"
Awesome discussion
♥
:
↳
Steve Del Sol @6:28
Hello, Mr.Steve. I’m wondering, what’s fer dinner?
♥
:
↳
Steve Del Sol @6:27
the only thing i do on my computer is check my email and look at this website. it's easier to do less on this because i dont go to school. everything at schools is on screens now.
:
Hmmm. I agree that popular technology is annoying and troublesome. So, yes, perhaps no computer at all would be a good choice.
Some of us, however, use a PC that is Linux based, and mostly disconnected from the evil empire.
🤖
♥
:
I've been upgrading... our landlines!
When people talk on the phone, way too often they do it by pressing an awkward small slab-shaped pocket computer up to the side of their head, and it's by absolutely no means a pleasant experience. Cell "phones" are actually absolutely terrible actual phones.
So I've been making sure that when anyone in out home wants to talk by voice with another human being somewhere else, it can be done using a dedicated hardwired device optimized for talking, with a nice comfortable real handset.
But I'm actually letting a little bit of newer technology slip in, because I think it's not completely un-useful: the dedicated desk (or kitchen WALL, with a big long coiled handset cord just like the Beforetimes) phones are VOIP (Voice-Over-IP) devices with a digital connection direct to each phone – just because the sound quality of the calls is really nice, and might improve the subtleties of the person-to-person link while chatting.
I love the resiliency and bulletproof build of the old-fashioned real copper-wire POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) phone system of yore – with sturdy Western Electric phone instruments which could be used as a club then make a call just fine, and all those phones powered by the phone network even through a blackout in your home – but Verizon allowed all the copper wiring to rot and somehow got out from under the requirement to maintain that essential infrastructure, and switched us all to fake-copper service using VOIP to the home which then drove the copper wires in our house... so none of the reliability of classic POTS, but the bandwidth and flexibility limitations of copper phone lines.
So I figured if we'd be living with the fragility of VOIP, we might as well optimize for its advantages. I'm digging that.
:
really enjoying this conversation. I feel very dependent on my phone, it also gives me some really fantastic experiences while commuting, that are almost exclusively related to listening to music. I should invest in a walkman or something
:
it's so messed up that so many of us need smart phones for so many things and even for safety (travelling etc. like we can't just stop and ask for directions everywhere especially travelling alone/vulnerable, and plus nobody knows directions or too suspicious to help lol), we need to build more robust communities!! but in the meantime, I use this thing for everything I can't afford from education to therapy
🤖
♥
:
↳
hectic @6:33
It's so frustrating to see my nieces and nephews with their school-issued chromebooks and ipads. I don't care if the devices lack social media or unfilitered internet, it's the conditioning to depend on screens through their formative years.
:
↳
hectic @6:27
Consider yourself lucky. As long as you're not the kind who brings attention to himself/herself, you won't get yourself in a heated conversation that escalates into aggressive behavior.
:
Social media seems like the worst part of the surveillance phone. Of course, you’re surveilled other places but social media is probably the worst avenue for it. Weirdly, having a laptop & surveillance phone is sorta freeing for me, allowing me to work remotely so I can do things like tour and work from the van.
:
Hello Mark & August, Great discussion. Here are some articles from the NY Times this week about this topic - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/magazine/anna-lembke-interview.html AND https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html?smid=url-share
:
i got off major social media a few years ago and while I feel sooooo much better in many ways, I've also missed out on so many shows, updates, peoples entire lives, in the years in between. catching up with people I hadn't seen in ages, I realized how much I missed. even close friends forget to call cuz they forget I didn't get the facebook invite. we need to figure out how to bridge the gap in our communities
🤖
♥
:
Well, Zuck has his hands full addressing the unfairness of his in house comments being leaked with no regard for his privacy when he's trying to be so transparent.
♥
:
↳
mndave @6:35
it's funny, when i went to school we always hated how lots of stuff was 'restricted'. now i'm thankful it was and i see what a good idea it is! but it's a solution to a problem that never needed to exist.
♥
:
thanks for the show mark! i'm just gonna listen now. time to get off the tech
:
places where people can gather freely in person without spending money are severely lacking, which feeds directly into the smartphone addiction. people are lonely
♥
:
Wearing an ear ring!!!!
♥
:
Two earrings on the same ear!!!!
♥
:
Three earings!!!!
:
In the future I envision tech-free communities, just like August suggested. The catch is that only the wealthy will be able to live there.
:
I used to do "Device-Free Saturdays." I made it up. It's a great first step, and makes the rest of the week better!
:
But, but, this phone is my lifeline to WFMU.
Sigh
:
balance. it is relative to your conditions. changing conditions aka environment, peeps, places… we have bodies that want to move and inhabit space… balance is a dynamic process… put the screens away every day at the same rough time and really be with what you are doing that isn’t mediated by a screen…
🤖
♥
:
Traveling on public transport these days is like stepping in to a zombie movie. Everybody is glued to a phone.
:
This is a bit of an overstatement. Tell Mariame Kaba she’s not radical because she’s using a smartphone and posting on Bluesky.
:
So much for engagement. Interesting that my command-line experience today on a small server had much more engagement with people in Brazil, Germany, and Australia, none of whom I had encountered online before, all new people. Bye
:
What about having a really old smartphone that you can't use most apps on because they don't work?
♥
:
I agree. It’s interesting to wonder how do we come to know what we know?
The civil war for example. Oh, you know about the America Civil war? What have you read on 1861-1865v
🤖
♥
:
↳
castor @6:43
the catch is that device support and security updates are sunsetted thanks to forced obsolescence. unless you've got a rotating roster of slightly less out-of-date devices at the ready, it's still going to be a hindrance sooner rather than later
♥
:
It’s like trying to tell a T.V lover to stop watching T.V. Give up yer phone. Ok, yea.. i ummm i’ll think about that…
:
I think addressing the hole a smartphone attempts to fill for a person (social, navigation, tool, etc) is most effective in reducing the need for the phone in the first place. Ive made waves of attempts to kick the smartphone but i keep picking it back up because I have things to do, and that's what I got... interested in mid and low tech solutions people have been introducing!
:
try a Kyocera dumb-phone
🤖
♥
:
The Netherlands is gearing down on 3G.. no more old style phones.. :(
🤖
♥
:
Yes, and if you want to take a photo – use an actual camera!
www.flickr.com...
:
yeah I'm Panicked About Navigation it's called being lost and alone in an unfamiliar place LOL I value my life
:
Speaking of Zuckboy, I was reminded that the farmer in "Charlotte's Web" is named Zuckerman (I have the DVD of the Hanna-Barbera adaptation), which gave me an idea for a song parody of the movie's climax number "Zuckerman's Famous Pig". My parody version would be called "Zuckerberg's Facebook Page". Just have to get cracking on thinking up the lyrics.
🤖
♥
:
It's a lot to take on a bus
🤖
♥
:
Well, the convergence of tools in one device could be faked with a flashlight that is a mirror, a wind-up clock and a few other analog devices.
🤖
♥
:
↳
red_door_what_for in ypsilanti @6:49
The obvious irony is that everyone who uses navigation is still lost. My ex used to make wrong turns out of our driveway because the GPS didn't orient them immediately.
:
What about things like location sharing with friends to stay safe on dates and travels in unfamiliar areas? Or access to things like uber if you dont have a car and live somewhere without public transport?
:
But then you have to carry all that stuff around. I used to shlep around a portable CD player and a camera and a flip phone. That was no fun. And I had to wear a watch.
♥
:
On the lightphone bandwagon.
🤖
♥
:
↳
Sam @6:51
One should still wear a watch, always.
:
Thinking about the answers, friends
:
@mndave sure lol but I'm talking about safety. when my car broke down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere for example. also walking home at night. I'm not exactly "big and tough looking" and human trafficking is crazy around here. having my phone has saved me from bad situations where I needed an exit. I hate that I need it.
:
↳
Jeff Moore @6:53
I can’t wear watches, rings, chains, anything like that on my body. Clothes are bad enough.
:
This a such a wonderful and necessary conversation. Thanks for conducting it.
Looking forward to reading your pamphlet, August.
Resonates a lot with what Matt Christman says:
“We’ve been turned into cogs of pure desire.”
“The internet exists to soothe your thwarted desires. It’s a pacifier. Everything that you don’t have in your life you can get a simulation of. And that includes sex, achievement in the form of video games, and politics in the way you feel like you’re becoming a political subject.
It’s also predicated on never delivering those things, in only giving you the simulated version that you keep having to come back for. And the inevitable result of that is that you become desensitized, and you need more and more, because it’s not sufficient….which means that, the very structure of the internet - because that’s where the money’s at; it’s in the clicks - militates against ever doing anything constructive or positive.”
♥
:
Thank you, August
:
↳
Sam @6:51
I for one wouldn't mind going that retro if it meant gaining back my sense of organization.
:
@Sam real, I tried carrying around my digital camera and gps and all that and it hurt my back I couldn't do it anymore, and also those devices are getting old and replacing all that is crazy
:
Thanks August and Mark!
🤖
♥
:
Thanks! Getting off my phone leaves time for all my other devices!
♥
:
loved these hot takes! hot potatoes! whoa 😱
:
Thank you so much August & Mark & Everyone!
:
↳
Sam @6:51
That‘s the point - you don‘t have to.
🤖
♥
:
Thanks, Mark, August. Great meeting of the minds!
♥
:
Thank you, August, Mark. Wonderful!
🤖
♥
:
Thanks Mark! The August!
♥
:
Thank you August and Mark! Very inspiring!
🤖
♥
:
I can report that people are seriously leaving Facebook and Instagram. They have probably already left the-service-formerly-known-as-Twitter.
🤖
♥
:
Thanks Mark and August!
:
Thanks, Mark! Keep fighting the good fight, our Silicon Savior!
:
I'm interested in those practical solutions I'll have to check out the book! thanks for the talk 🤖🤖
🤖
♥
:
Flip this and you have Companion...robots can never trust people
♥
:
Thanks, everyone!
:
Great interview! Thank you!
🤖
♥
:
Thank you Mark and August!!!
