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Guess what: There’s no reason to talk on your phone anymore, unless you’re at home or in one of a few select emergency exceptions. It’s true. Talking on your phone isn’t only obsolete, it’s extremely annoying. So let’s kick the habit together, forever.
The smartphone imbues us with so many ways to say something about the world we couldn’t literally say. Instantly and articulately. No rambling list of street names will ever be as good as a map, no description of that gelato’s colour as precise as a photo. Or maybe a poetic text. The impossibly small computer is a poet and an artist and a cinematographer that can share your life with anyone you want. See a beautiful flower? Instagram it. Late for lunch? Fire off a quick text. Important email that someone needs to see ASAP? Forward it, and then text about it. And then Instagram a photo of your face looking urgent. Need food? Use your Seamless app, or any other number of extremely efficient ways to direct food into your atrophied gullet. Oh no—I’m lost! I’d better call Ji—oh, wait, no, I have a map of literally the entire world on my phone that can guide me anywhere.
We seduce via text, we breakup via text, we collaborate via email, we joke via tweet, we share adorable baby moments via video—the smartphone has given us pearly gloves of infinite dexterity, grace, and brevity—we can do nearly everything quickly and cleanly. And silently.
The smartphone does almost all of it for you, and does it better. You don’t need your voice like you used to.
We’re extremely busy people. With everyone both hyperbusy and hyperconnected (blech, that term), the capacity for endless jabber is wider than ever before. In trains, restaurants, sidewalks, parks, bars, cafes, hospitals—everyone is talking. Very, very few of them need to be talking.
And they oughtn’t be. Why? Because it wrecks what little space we have left for genuine human contact. We love to talk to our pals and friends in person—you know, friendship. The brain is accustomed to hearing conversation. But the stilted, one-way scraps heaped upon us when you carry on in public? It’s a signal jammer, distracting and derailing the real interactions we’re trying to have. Maps and apps and texting can take care of so much of the mundane and junk talk we used to have to perform with our skulls, filtering out needless sounds and making room for the good stuff. The sweet, funny, personal bits. Those are fine! But if you want to indulge..?
Like drugs, vicious sexual deviance, and listening to Tyga, nobody has any reason to care about what questionable things you do in private. Your life is your life. And as long as it stays entirely your life, not overlapping even the slightest bit upon the rest, society shrugs away. Go for it. Do you want to have a 45 minute conversation about how Ben has been such a dick lately? Yes! Do it! Talking itself is no sin, but the nature of phonetalk is inherently disruptive when the whole crowd is doing it together. We talk over each other, we plug our ears, we look for a more quiet place in vain. Instead of amplifying the noise, go with silent smartphone subtlety, or go to the place where you’re allowed to do whatever the hell you want.
The home is a special place and will continue to be, a place where you can pour out anything you want to anyone you want. This means three hour phone calls at dawn, this means yelling, this means crying—it means whatever you want. And while you’re doing it, nobody’s ears and brains are stepped on, no attention span snapped. The home is the new phone booth.
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And if we want a chat with a friend/family member while we’re walking from A-B?
Smartphones don’t let us do that in any other way. Texting and using the phone in general is difficult and very slow while you’re walking and in bright sunlight.
This is the second incredibly stupid article I’ve read on this site in recent memory. The first, and far worse of the two, was that utter rubbish about the computer mouse being obsolete.
That’s without mentioning businesses. There are a vast number of business situations where a phone call is quicker, more appropriate, more informative etc than almost any other form of communication. This article, along with the mouse one you mentioned, is utter bull.
I was thinking everything you just said. Thank you.
Here Here, utter rubbish – just like the mouse one
Let me just sum up my reaction – NOPE!
Yeah, I only read parts, and was like, yeah I’m not even going to bother reading this. Which is good coz i have like 45 giz articles open
and some bookmarked to read. I can’t seem to filter what to read much D:
I’m with you on that!
I can talk and talk and talk!
We don’t want to walk around like busy little ants, like the London underground where people act like zombies and hardly anyone talk’s.
It’s good to talk on the phone or face to face. Besides in text you have no real way of expressing emotion, a message can often be read differently to how it’s meant. And not to forget talkin is more private these days, our text messages and pics and be seen by others without our knowledge’
I’m sorry, but honestly I think this is ridiculous; the phone is neither obsolete nor irritating.
Firstly, the whole thing about smart phones doing all sorts of things DOESN’T make the phone obsolete. Text, while great for certain situations, isn’t a replacement for talking to someone; its a complement to it. Certain situations call for texting, while others call for a more direct approach. In terms of communication, a phone call is MUCH faster, and once you’re connected to the person you wish to converse with, you’re guaranteed a response (“why won’t you reply to my text?! WHY?!” is far more infuriating, I think, than someone not picking up the phone).
On a personal level being able to hear someone say something, rather than just reading it off a screen, can even help me understand what they’re saying easier. Not only that, as a student, still learning about the many, many aspects of life, being able to just call my mother up for help and advice wherever, and whenever I need it (almost always outside of my house) is invaluable to me, if irritating to my mother (thanks mum
)
And nobody wanting to listen to your conversation? Correction. Nobody CARES. It’s simply something people glance at and ignores. Conversations, whether in person or on the phone, makes no difference to anybody else unless its in an inappropriate circumstance (in which case a person-to-person conversation is almost always just as likely to cause just as much irk as a phone call). IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. At all. People talk over each other all the time. It’s called being in public.
After the article telling us to open any attachment and link send to us in an email by friends and now this, I’m fully expecting Sam to write an article saying that we don’t need to go outside ever again as we can “see pictures of the sun on the internet” and all do internet. Then there’ll be one saying that Wall-e should actually happen.
“We seduce via text, we breakup via text”
Please don’t lump us all in with yourself, Biddle.
Please, my conversations are so awesome you’d love to overhead them. Sometimes I phone people while I’m the quiet carriage on the the train just so I know more people can hear all about my awesome life.
Seriously though, stop listening in on other peoples conversations and get on with being a miserable so-and-so somewhere else. Some of us have to tell their girlfriends how adorable they are as loudly as possible in a public place.
If you’d ever paid the slightest interest to linguistics, you’d understand how much information is carried through intonation. I’m not certain of the figures, but the amount of information received through lexis (the actual words we use) is dwarfed by the way it’s delivered (pitch, speed, filled pauses (like saying “uhhh”), unfilled pauses, stessed syllables, etc). Besides video calling – which requires considerably more concentration, mind – the humble voice call is the best way of conversing on the move. To consider it redundant is ridiculous.
Guess what: There’s no reason to talk face to face anymore, unless you’re at home or in one of a few select emergency exceptions. It’s true. Talking face to face isn’t only obsolete, it’s extremely annoying. So let’s kick the habit together, forever.
I dread to see the world where Gizmodo posts an article like this.
The quality of most UK articles over what we get from the US makes me so glad we have a site of our own.
Not sure about you Sam, but I keep to my own business. I don’t eavesdrop strangers on their phones. A phone call is not obsolete and probably wont be for a long time.
Holly crap, talking on the phone is obsolete? Since when? Ugh, I can’t keep up with technology anymore, I feel so old!
I thought the point of Gizmodo UK was so we didn’t have this type of articles?
*article.
(Or an edit button.)
I thought you were joking… maybe even trolling… NOPE!
I would challenge you to convey as much meaningful information at anywhere near the same speed of a spoken conversation via text. I hate texting, it is easy to miss meanings on ambiguous turns of phrase that would normally be explicited by intonation.
If i am walking a particularly long & boring stretch on a route i know thoroughly, i often pic up the phone and scroll through my contact list to see who i haven’t caught up with in a while, just to drop them a line and see how they are getting on.
Good work Mr biddle. yet again you are doing very little to convince me that you are anything other than a poor writer.
Agreed.
Errr how about no. Normally I agree that its annoying to these kinda things but on the phone its not annoying plus it make moment far less awkward…