How do you travel anywhere, book a flight, hotel or rental car, navigate anywhere, or even get a list of local restaurants? (and when you say 'no proprietary apps', does that include Google Maps?)
Wow, I'm honestly really interested to know your age. I'm Gen X, and easily thought "He runs a tech company, so I'm assuming he knows how to use a (desktop/laptop) computer". All of those things can very easily be accomplished on a laptop, and furthermore, since you're not just going to pick it out of your pocket and randomly start scrolling, those actions are usually much more intentional when done on a computer.
But that doesn't work when traveling. Are you going to carry your laptop with you all day to check for nearby restaurants (unless your plans are perfect and you know for sure how long will each thing take and you can plan where exactly to eat)? How do you even find a café or whatever with wifi when you're in an unknown place? And you never ever change any plan based on new information? I just spent a month in Sri Lanka, and mobile internet was extremely useful multiple times per day ( compare restaurants in the current location, find the nearest bus stop because you're tired and don't want to walk anymore, check how much X should cost because maybe someone will try to scam you, etc etc).
Sometimes I will look up interesting restaurants in advance. Sometimes I just wander and walk into somewhere at random. Ratings are over-rated. I found my new favorite Sushi restaurant, Elephant Sushi, in SF just going for a walk around lunch time.
As for finding Wifi, it is incredibly rare I go to any restaurant or coffee shop I randomly see who does not have wifi.
As for checking pricing... If I think something is over priced I take a note to look it up online later. No need to be in a rush to spend money.
I used to make the same excuses but I encourage you to leave your phone at home long enough for the withdrawl symptoms to wear off and enjoy the self confidence to know you can navigate the modern world with your own brain even if you choose to go back to a phone. Consider it wilderness survival training.
You just plan ahead. Take 15 minutes at the start of your day and plan your day and route. You don't have to stick to the plan, it just gives you a baseline. Experimenting is nice as well. Maybe your favorite restaurant would not have been recommended by an app?
No plan survives first contact with the enemy. That baseline can change dramatically due to unforseen circumstances ( museum was boring so you quit early/very interesting so you spent much more time there/closed; transportation took much longer/shorter than expected, etc.).
As for experimenting, it depends on where you're travelling. I wouldn't want to experiment in a third world country without reading online comments and reviews.
You keep bringing up Sri Lanka as the justification for a smart phone. The reality is you can just walk around a central district and choose a restaurant based on its appearance, convenience, location, or posted menu. This is how it was done 15 years ago and earlier. You don’t need to read reviews or it’s opening hours on a smart phone. If you’re standing in front of it, you know if it is open. If the food turns out to be bad because you did not read online reviews, so what? Is your trip spoiled or did you just make a memory about shitty food in a Sri Lankan square? If the food is good, did you just discover a “hidden gem”?
I’m sure you’ll post a reply that explains some outlier reason for a smartphone: what if I’m in rural Bangladesh and there’s no central square? What if….
But think how people got through these difficulties before smartphones. A lot more experimentation and reaching out to locals. This is why portable language phrase books used to be so popular when traveling.
No, I'm giving examples where your life is made easier by having a smartphone, based on my very recent experiences. They're also very practical in daily life (i can pay with one, share my location with my SO for easier coordination, etc)
Not every city has a central square, not everything you want to see might be within reach of one, not all restaurants are there, and of course all restaurants there can be tourist traps.
I don't need to think about how people struggled with things that are easy to today besides for the fun/novelty of it. While we're at it, exchanging money, carrying around and paying in cash suck. It was slightly less bad because i could look up the locations of ATMs of banks that don't charge you an extra fee for being a tourist on the spot.
> If the food turns out to be bad because you did not read online reviews, so what? Is your trip spoiled or did you just make a memory about shitty food in a Sri Lankan square
Considering how bad "bad" can get, that memory can involve a trip to the hospital ( food poisoning, parasites, etc.).
Do you think locals need a phone constantly to navigate? To avoid bad food? They operate on information cached in their brains and that is transferable. Ask a hotel attendant or a shop owner checking you out for any local restaurants they like or where the nearest X is.
His approach is a great example of how these devices have affected IRL interaction. They’ve significantly reduced them. Whether that’s good bad or neutral, who knows?
I read tons of comments and reviews -before- I travel to a new area and take note of multiple destinations that might be worth checking out.
Thieves target people who are distracted so they can run by and grab a wallet before you see them coming. Scammers and sales people target people who look lost.
When you take the time to learn the things you want to do in advance and where they are you can walk alert, tall, and confident without your head buried in a phone during precious vacation time. This body language wards off many predators be they human or animal.
Again, I'm just really interested to know your age, because it's fascinating to me that many people see living without a smartphone as nigh impossible. I mean, the whole world figured out how to do it just 15 years ago!
First of all, I'm not saying a smartphone isn't useful, but I'm saying it's not that hard to get by without one if you want to "take back control" of your brain. To your examples, you could simply plan ahead, or (shocking I know) ask people in the street.
Again, the while world got by without a smartphone just a short while ago, it's not that hard.
I'm not saying it's hard or impossible, just extremely impractical. It'd be like insisting on walking for long distances when you can take a horse or train.
> or (shocking I know) ask people in the street.
Try that in a country like Sri Lanka and at best you'll get scammed by paying a commission for the reference.
Planning only gets you so far. You can't predict everything ( for instance I've had a museum that turned out to be closed, and another one that turned out to be in a really dodgy part of town recently).
As for my age, I'm what Americans who believe in that crap call a millennial, but I'm from Eastern Europe, didn't get my first phone until well into highschool, and my first smartphone slightly less than 10 years ago ( so I've spent more than half my life without a smartphone).
Sri Lankan here. I'm not sure why you have the impression that asking a random person on the street for directions will result in your being scammed. That's certainly not the culture here. In fact, the many foreign friends I've hosted over the years tell me that your average Sri Lankan will go out of their way to help a foreigner—no fees, compensation, or other inducements needed.
You do want be wary of anyone who starts a conversation with you (as opposed to your starting the conversation with them). And yes, if you're in a "touristy" area, you do have a significantly higher chance of meeting someone aiming to rip you off. But these are true of essentially every country in the world—not just Sri Lanka.
Probably bad luck, or more likely, your being in a tourist hotspot.
Putting ethical and moral values aside, your average person on the street (in say, Colombo, or any other "normal" area) has no interest in (or potential gain from) directing anyone towards a scam.
Maybe it's gotten worse due to the current economic crisis, or maybe it was just really bad luck, but multiple people we asked for help/directions tried to scam us ( by saying there's this amazing ceremony happening now and you have to take a tuktuk to get you there quickly, and waving to a seemingly random one from those passing on the street).
I have encountered hustlers countless times and never been scammed. Have a hard rule to never follow strangers. Take generously offered information and go your own way. Be careful of anyone being -too- friendly. The more time you spend interacting with strangers the sooner you start to learn how to spot a hustle from a mile away.
Most people are happy to help point someone in the right direction and maybe offer a tip or two. Tips from locals often reveal great chill spots to explore in a city that the tourist sites have not directed the masses at yet.
You misunderstood. I never said I'm unable to do those things without proprietary apps, or a smartphone. I meant mainly if I'm traveling away from home base (esp. in a city I don't know), and/or not at a desk (e.g. in subway/bus/train/walking). I'm perfectly aware how to research stuff on desktop/laptop and in advance. If I was traveling by myself, or everyone I planned to meet was like you (had a deterministic workday and schedule, and always planned days/weeks in advance), then yes (most people stopped behaving like that in the early 2000s, IME; people are flaky, people have unpredictable workloads). Otherwise, I am saying if the challenge is "find a decent [Vietnamese] restaurant in [price category] near [some subway stop/intersection in NYC, a city I'm not familiar with], text me the location and I'll meet you there in 45 minutes", and you're not seated at a computer, then you'll find a phone indispensable. Yes, I could choose to not associate with 80% of people I know, or try to get them to fit in with my schedule.
- you're touching on underlying cultural expectations: fluidity of people's schedules and movements, which in turn is governed by work-life fluidity, unpredictable work, stuff coming up etc.
- I never said I can't navigate without a smartphone or GPS, or offline map. (I actually navigate very well without GPS and I do that most of the time).
- rideshare companies have made it near-impossible to use them without a smartphone (yes I'm aware there are very heavily restricted ways to use them without).
- 2021 was particularly bad for unpredictability; many businesses temporarily closed, almost all had changed their opening hours and days or indoor/outdoor seating hours/arrangements, some refuse to take reservations esp. for outdoor seating, almost all of them changed their menus and many jacked up the prices invalidating existing reviews, etc. etc. Most of my friends are temporarily/permanently WFH, which means they don't know these local changes, esp. the ones with kids hardly ever emerge from their house. For example, evening maintenance and service changes on the NYC MTA meant it became seriously non-deterministic starting 7pm and worse after 9pm. Also, it became seriously dangerous after 11pm, esp. in unmonitored stations. (Carrying around a laptop in this situation would be risky.) Rideshare prices surged even in low volume hours due to driver shortages.
- as you know during Covid there was an accelerated push towards e-ticketing, boarding passes etc. Covid certs on phone, too. Yes you can partially opt out of that and carry paper versions. But when you need to have a 3-day recent Covid test for airplane, it can be helpful.
Yes, "those actions are usually much more intentional when done on a computer"*, but in order to make this modus operandi work, I'd need to change the habits of the people I meet. The middle-ground is if I'm dealing with a particularly flaky friend I'll say "I'll be at [place] at [time], I have to leave by [time], if you can't make it let me know in advance". If people flake out several times, I communicate my displeasure.
If you haven't tried navigating using a GPS-enabled smartphone, you should. It's super-convenient compared to trying to do that with a website on your computer.
If you have not tried navigating by simply learning your environment or jotting down some notes in advance, you should. Being able to walk confidently knowing where you are going wards off predators.
Besides GPS units literally atrophy cognitive functions which is probably not healthy...
I do carry a GPS enabled smartphone with OSMand~. I use maps, but I hardly ever turn on GPS. It just feels like cheating and crippling my skills to navigate. No difference whether in nature or in cities.
Actually I prefer paper maps, they have better usability for many use cases.
These specifically I will go out of my way to not do on my phone. It feels claustrophobic not having a full-size screen and multiple windows open to compare.
I'm a frequent traveler, and for all of these tasks my laptop is 100x better. Why would I want to do anything serious on my phone?
vs:
large screen (so you can see more info, have more windows open to compare)
keyboard/mouse interface instead of tapping (faster, doesn't take screen space)
easy to save documents in a common folder which
super-convenient tools for creating my own consistent file-names and directory structure
auto-back-ups for compliance/filing.
The phone has only one advantage-- you usually have it with you.
