Going off the grid

[The_J]

Choice or forced situation?

 

[Zamphyr]

Well what do you have to take away before it stops being smart then? 4G? 3G? Touch screen? Web browser? Email? Camera? Colour screen? MP3 playback? Quadrophonic ring tones? WAP browser? SMS capability? SIM cards?

Email.

As soon as you had email (and then internet browsing), it was a mobile office.
Before that, as you said, your phone was a phone that could do other things (camera phone, iPod & phone with crappy reception, etc).

Email made phones smart, text/twitter makes users dumb.

 

[Mise]

@OP's question: Yeah, I could live without all that stuff, and am old enough to have done that for a good 70-80% of my life already. Would I want to? No, not really. I've cut down on things that I think are unhealthy, like the news and the default subreddits. I still use facebook a lot, especially when I'm on the toilet or postponing getting out of bed. I'm a right procrastinator and fb lets me do something in the mornings. I used to do Duolingo, but now that I've finally completed the Portuguese tree, I haven't been using it much. I should start doing that instead of facebook.

Anyway. Smartphone, no, I couldn't realistically be as happy without a smartphone. I bloody love electronics, they've been a major hobby of mine since I was a child. I'm always tinkering with things on my phone - I get a real kick out of it. I would have to find another hobby, and frankly I really don't see the benefit of that. Smartphones don't hurt me.

I stopped using Google for searches some years ago, replacing it with DuckDuckGo and StartPage. I still love Google products in general, and when they release a new one I usually open myself up and let them have whatever data they want. Then I reign it in, if it doesn't do much for me. Gmail for example is a genuinely amazing product. Google Now is pretty useful too. There are benefits to letting them have data. But I'm mindful of what I'm giving them, and what I'm getting in return. I try not to let myself sleepwalk into anything, and do research before every purchase decision, however small. Payments-in-data are no exception.

@Dumb phone question: To me there's a pretty clear divide between the Nokia N95 and the original iPhone. I mean, at the time, the difference was like night and day. The experience on an N95 was terrible compared to an iPhone: an iPhone really did feel like the entire internet in your hands, not just some massively gimped WAP or mobile version. It was the real internet, on your phone. It was genuinely a revelation. Looking back at it with today's eyes, it might all seem like a simple step up from physical keyboard and trackerball/dpad to a touchscreen and soft keyboard, but at the time the difference in user experience cannot be understated.

 

[Borachio]

I do live in a country with a bureaucracy that is (nominally) working; the US. Specifically, in California, which is yet another bureaucracy that nominally works.

Short version: I do what would probably be called 'handyman work' mostly. Sometimes for cash, often for barter.

Long version, maybe tl;dr, but you did ask:

Your life-style is certainly impressive. But I wonder how sustainable it is.

What's going to happen when you're approaching 70? (Not that ageing doesn't represent a problem for every one of us, of course.)

I've found there's certain advantages to keeping on grid myself. But with a low profile.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Choice or forced situation?

Your life-style is certainly impressive. But I wonder how sustainable it is.

What's going to happen when you're approaching 70? (Not that ageing doesn't represent a problem for every one of us, of course.)

I've found there's certain advantages to keeping on grid myself. But with a low profile.

It's by choice. I don't like the way the economic system uses demand to direct wealth, and the bloody requirements of maintaining the system, so I stopped participating to the largest degree I could manage.

As to sustainability...when I can no longer maintain my life, it will end. Isn't that how it's intended to work? The whole "be miserable today so you can stack the chips needed to make the misery of failing health last longer" concept is somewhat beyond my ken. My parents both died in their eighties, and by my observation and their own admissions wouldn't have missed a thing if they had died at seventy.

 

[Kozmos]

As to sustainability...when I can no longer maintain my life, it will end. Isn't that how it's intended to work? The whole "be miserable today so you can stack the chips needed to make the misery of failing health last longer" concept is somewhat beyond my ken. My parents both died in their eighties, and by my observation and their own admissions wouldn't have missed a thing if they had died at seventy.

This is a rather long blog post, but deals with quality of life near the end of life.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

Unless medical technologies make a rather sizeable leap by the time I'm over 65, I will probably cash out in the most stupid and entertaining way I can imagine.

 

[Borachio]

It's by choice. I don't like the way the economic system uses demand to direct wealth, and the bloody requirements of maintaining the system, so I stopped participating to the largest degree I could manage.

As to sustainability...when I can no longer maintain my life, it will end. Isn't that how it's intended to work? The whole "be miserable today so you can stack the chips needed to make the misery of failing health last longer" concept is somewhat beyond my ken. My parents both died in their eighties, and by my observation and their own admissions wouldn't have missed a thing if they had died at seventy.

Oh, I can totally understand your position. I "bought out" of the system a long time ago. It's just that I haven't done it in the totally radical way you seem to have.

I think it's admirable the way you seem to put a premium on cultivating human relationships rather than economic ones.

After all, I think, the only true capital is the human one.

 

[CavLancer]

Are you ready when the grid goes off you? That's the real question. Forget all your internet activities, try a total lack of electrical power from one moment to the next. It happened to us here for roughly 3 weeks. The scientists say that a CME could send us back to the stone age for generations. I'm not ready for that, but I aspire to be. That would take some dough, maybe $100,000, and that isn't happening for us any time soon. Consider though that on the other side of such an event every cent you spend now will look like a bad investment. Its called a Carrington Event and it happened in the 1850s, before electrical lines were spread out to soak up all that juice and turn everything power generation related into burned out mush. After that it gets personal. The supermarkets quickly sell out, the trucks don't roll from the farms, the fertilizer which comes from the oil doesn't get to the farms, and b i l l i o n s die of starvation, in the first few years. After a few decades there would be a new pattern of life, something resembling the 1800s more than now. To get from where my family lives in time to that life after is on my mind a lot, though I can't actually do anything about it. Your personal power generation would have to be shielded in a Faraday cage. Everyone so proud of their solar panels would watch them fry. Its in God's hands if I ever can get really ready.

Never want to look at my daughter and have to say there is no food, and there never will be. If it happened today, that's what would happen. Add to that event as possible precursers for the absolute need to go off grid or die...

A major caldera going off. Yellowstone is 40,000 years over due. No growing season to speak of for years. Electrical generation and internet should continue. You'll be able to watch doom spread across the planet in technicolor.

A global pandemic killing lots of folks. You want to get your family as far from anyone else as you can when this happens, and survive there until it ends. When it does it really depends on how many died as to whether there's a world to go back to.

Meteor, comet, whatever. Would have to be fairly big. Little ones hit all the time.

Other stuff, I dunno.

 

[Commodore]

Are you ready when the grid goes off you? That's the real question. Forget all your internet activities, try a total lack of electrical power from one moment to the next. It happened to us here for roughly 3 weeks. The scientists say that a CME could send us back to the stone age for generations. I'm not ready for that, but I aspire to be. That would take some dough, maybe $100,000, and that isn't happening for us any time soon. Consider though that on the other side of such an event every cent you spend now will look like a bad investment. Its called a Carrington Event and it happened in the 1850s, before electrical lines were spread out to soak up all that juice and turn everything power generation related into burned out mush. After that it gets personal. The supermarkets quickly sell out, the trucks don't roll from the farms, the fertilizer which comes from the oil doesn't get to the farms, and b i l l i o n s die of starvation, in the first few years. After a few decades there would be a new pattern of life, something resembling the 1800s more than now. To get from where my family lives in time to that life after is on my mind a lot, though I can't actually do anything about it. Its in God's hands if I ever can.

Never want to look at my daughter and have to say there is no food, and there never will be. If it happened today, that's what would happen. Add to that event as possible precursers for the absolute need to go off grid or die...

A major caldera going off. Yellowstone is 40,000 years over due. No growing season to speak of for years. Electrical generation and internet should continue. You'll be able to watch doom spread across the planet in technicolor.

A global pandemic killing lots of folks. You want to get your family as far from anyone else as you can when this happens.

Meteor, comet, whatever. Would have to be fairly big. Little ones hit all the time.

Other stuff, I dunno.

It's not about being ready for such a cataclysmic event that takes our tech away because no one is truly ready for it. Not even those hardcore survivalist types. The people that would survive in such a world are those that are best able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. So if you aren't a very adaptable person, then it doesn't matter how well-prepared you are, you will still probably fail to survive in a world without civilization.

 

[CavLancer]

Perhaps you are right. However it would be good to start adapting now. The survivalist types have a better chance than the stock brokers and city slickers. Thing is, ya gotta be smart about prepping. I'm simply not ready. If I were I'd have a large underground shelter with solar panels all tucked away inside a Faraday cage. In fact the whole place would be one. Nothing deployed, it would either burn or attract attention. So, in that case you have a better chance than being an ex full of himself high school jock who learned how to tie knots in boy scouts.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Email.

As soon as you had email (and then internet browsing), it was a mobile office.
Before that, as you said, your phone was a phone that could do other things (camera phone, iPod & phone with crappy reception, etc).

Email made phones smart, text/twitter makes users dumb.

Well I could get email on my phone years before I ever heard the term smartphone. Around 2004 I believe. And if I had it then it must have been around before that as I've never had the latest phones. I've only heard the term smartphone in the past 3 or 4 years.

But even if you were right... I still don't get why that's a noteworthy dividing line in terms of "smartness". But I should probably drop this little bugbear of mine now.