What's the best modern PoD to kill, or at least reduce, smartphones and social media in modern life? Curious, as I am thinking about working on a mid-2000s retropunk scenario (admittedly it does involve some ASB elements), and the idea of a world where social media is somewhat more niche is an idea I find intriguing!
Best Modern PoD to kill smartphones?
- Thread starter JRogyRogy
- Start date
The easiest way is for the proto internet to be restricted to government use only back in the 1970's and stay that way.
Nationalize the telephone companies for free land line use, which in turn leads to free dial up internet.
Cell phones remain a expensive niche item if everyone gets free phone and internet at home.
Cell phones remain a expensive niche item if everyone gets free phone and internet at home.
No private internet providers and websites; instead the internet is treated as a public utility, with a few government-run sites offering services to the public (weather reports, news, stock market info, online encyclopedia, a few educational sites, this sort of thing). Interestingly, that‘s basically how the internet looked like on early smartphones, where you only had access to special mobile versions of a few select websites, except in this case that‘s how it would be everywhere, not only on early smartphones.
With such a restricted internet, social media as we know it never becomes a thing. Smartphones with touch screens will probably still be invented sooner or later, since the control scheme is simply too convenient to ignore in the long term, but without social media they‘re unlikely to become such a central aspect to people‘s lives.
With such a restricted internet, social media as we know it never becomes a thing. Smartphones with touch screens will probably still be invented sooner or later, since the control scheme is simply too convenient to ignore in the long term, but without social media they‘re unlikely to become such a central aspect to people‘s lives.
You really cant. Classic example of when the technology is ready it is ready.
Killing apple does not help. The non apple phones where heading that way already. I could do most of the things on my non appke that could be done on an iphone. the iphone was just a LOT better at it. As for adding the camera,, that was bound to happen eventually.
Get rid of apple and you may see phones with true keyboards last a bit longer but ultimately you still get here,.
And you cant kill off cell phones by anything the US does or even the US Canada and western Europe as to many places that are kess develouped needed phones and once the technology is available it is easier and cheeper to invent/build cell phones then it is to run ground lines all over the place. So someone will invent cell phones.
As for the internet. That is more interesting. You can probably delay it a good bit but i think something like it will exist by today. Humm i wounder how long you could delay it?
My sugestion for a POD to look into… Blow up Parc. (PaloAlto Researcg Center). it seams like back in the day those guys were involved in almost everything that lead to the world we have today. Whole huge companies were created by folks that worked there. Heck iirc i think that it was at Parc that Gates and Jobs saw a primitive GUI computer and then ran back home and created the Mac and Windows…. And a ton of other things were in primitive form over there.
May not just slow down Cell ohones but could set computers back a good bit perhaps.
Killing apple does not help. The non apple phones where heading that way already. I could do most of the things on my non appke that could be done on an iphone. the iphone was just a LOT better at it. As for adding the camera,, that was bound to happen eventually.
Get rid of apple and you may see phones with true keyboards last a bit longer but ultimately you still get here,.
And you cant kill off cell phones by anything the US does or even the US Canada and western Europe as to many places that are kess develouped needed phones and once the technology is available it is easier and cheeper to invent/build cell phones then it is to run ground lines all over the place. So someone will invent cell phones.
As for the internet. That is more interesting. You can probably delay it a good bit but i think something like it will exist by today. Humm i wounder how long you could delay it?
My sugestion for a POD to look into… Blow up Parc. (PaloAlto Researcg Center). it seams like back in the day those guys were involved in almost everything that lead to the world we have today. Whole huge companies were created by folks that worked there. Heck iirc i think that it was at Parc that Gates and Jobs saw a primitive GUI computer and then ran back home and created the Mac and Windows…. And a ton of other things were in primitive form over there.
May not just slow down Cell ohones but could set computers back a good bit perhaps.
Riain
Banned
I've seen an argument for social media being either like the telephone where they have nothing to do with the content, or like the TV/radio where they're responsible for the content. They're currently like the phone service but they could become like TV.
How about if social media companies were classed as broadcasters from the start and their content was regulated? Could this throttle the requirements for internet phones enough that smart phones aren't worth developing?
How about if social media companies were classed as broadcasters from the start and their content was regulated? Could this throttle the requirements for internet phones enough that smart phones aren't worth developing?
RIM infamously derided the iPhone as impossible purely because they didn't believe it could have any battery life. What if battery tech just never advanced sufficiently enough?
Except dial up internet is garbage and people will still want mobile phones.
You can delay good ones for at least half a decade without Apple’s coup against the carriers—always the true problem—but the fundamentals date back decades.
Steve Jobs' "cancer" hits a few years early and he dies in 2006-7 could set them back 5-10 years.
I like that.
I think you would also have to flatten Moore's Law somewhere, and halt miniaturization. Computers remain a desk-top device, never get small enough to fit in your pocket. Laptops remain an expensive novelty, and tablets never exist....
Regards,
A damper can be put in functionality if GPS satellites were encrypted and only available for military use. And as long as the other constellations then follow suit, geolocation services would have taken a hit. Stronger pre-existing privacy and consumer protection laws in developed countries can limit the profit margins and functionality of mobile apps: if it's illegal to anonymously triangulate and record wifi and cell phone data, location services will take a hit.
But I don't think you can realistically stop social media. Privacy laws could prevent Facebook from demanding its users' actual names, but that wouldn't stop people from entering them on their own and even then, you're just dealing with anonymous social media. People want to interact with each other for a variety of reasons, and social media allows a facade of social interaction for moments of solitude. If you have ASB elements, then maybe mobile internet is more expensive and difficult than fixed internet connections. But people would still check social media at their homes and work.
Maybe antitrust legislation forces social media apps to be charge the users for their use? That can reduce the network effect and result in a larger variety of platforms with fewer people each and, therefore, less interesting overall?
But I don't think you can realistically stop social media. Privacy laws could prevent Facebook from demanding its users' actual names, but that wouldn't stop people from entering them on their own and even then, you're just dealing with anonymous social media. People want to interact with each other for a variety of reasons, and social media allows a facade of social interaction for moments of solitude. If you have ASB elements, then maybe mobile internet is more expensive and difficult than fixed internet connections. But people would still check social media at their homes and work.
Maybe antitrust legislation forces social media apps to be charge the users for their use? That can reduce the network effect and result in a larger variety of platforms with fewer people each and, therefore, less interesting overall?
Social media is ultimately just an extension of the public forum or community space. As such, while not entirely inevitable, it does follow the logical process that comes once the basic technology infrastructure is there and given the advancement of communications technology for the sake of military and business applications, it'd be difficult finding a natural way to very much slow that thing down.
That being said, there is always logistics to look through. The various rare metals and other materials that go into the creation of smartphones do alot of environmental damage and are relatively cheap to get as a result of the colonial ventures of the past evolving into how businesses ravage the third world for cheap resources and cheap labor to create such things along with the endless money that goes into advterising to manipulate the public desire for it.
Basically, you gotta bottleneck. Though combinations of legislation, diplomacy and enforcement, the development of new technologies is now basically forced to deal with having to abide with stricter practices rather than just have endless money shoveled into into them. This may mean practices like having to recycle metals and so on becomes the norm and combined with a cultural need for effiency, it would delay things quite a bit. Of course, as long as things like personal digital assistants, pagers, and personal phones exist, the idea to combine them would be pretty tempting and something that would linger because of it.
You probably could do away with PDAs without much trouble though I suspect pagers will be assimilated into cellular phones regardless. I suppose that phones would still have texting capabilities along with other basics like calculators and so on.
That being said, there is always logistics to look through. The various rare metals and other materials that go into the creation of smartphones do alot of environmental damage and are relatively cheap to get as a result of the colonial ventures of the past evolving into how businesses ravage the third world for cheap resources and cheap labor to create such things along with the endless money that goes into advterising to manipulate the public desire for it.
Basically, you gotta bottleneck. Though combinations of legislation, diplomacy and enforcement, the development of new technologies is now basically forced to deal with having to abide with stricter practices rather than just have endless money shoveled into into them. This may mean practices like having to recycle metals and so on becomes the norm and combined with a cultural need for effiency, it would delay things quite a bit. Of course, as long as things like personal digital assistants, pagers, and personal phones exist, the idea to combine them would be pretty tempting and something that would linger because of it.
You probably could do away with PDAs without much trouble though I suspect pagers will be assimilated into cellular phones regardless. I suppose that phones would still have texting capabilities along with other basics like calculators and so on.
Apple was developing the iPhone by 2005 and even had a physical beta version for testing purposes by 2004. Jobs passing away in 2006-07 wouldn't delay that by that much.