Despite what my detractors will tell you, I'm not opposed to tech - I worked in high tech my entire career, and it was only about the last 10 years that I didn't like the direction it was going in. But pointless tech and tech that is a step backwards, and tech that is designed to suck money out of my wallet I will decry at every opportunity. The smartphone is all three - and far more/worse.
Tech for its own sake is ridiculous - and much of it is just that, never mind that its senseless and poorly implemented - ON PURPOSE. People want to be fools, that's fine - I refuse to participate in the stupidity, just like I have refused my entire life to participate in lots of stupidities, most of them non-technological. Just because "everyone else" is doing something is no excuse to expect me to - indeed, if everyone else is doing "it", that's a pretty good reason to look at "it" with a critical eye, then go do the exact opposite as that is what actually makes sense much of the time. "Adapt or die" is fine - until it isn't. If I'm expected to adapt to bullshit, I would rather die. I don't want to live in such a world, and I won't. See "Covid-19 vaccine" for a reference...
The greatest evil of all is (needless) interference with free will. The smartphone is removing that from society and the world. Those of us who refuse the things are slowly, but surely becoming second class citizens as I found out a few months ago when I tried to rent a truck from Home Depot.
I've mentioned it before, but you're relatively new here so you may have missed it: I was in Egypt last January, and there I saw a society that the smartphone has not completely destroyed YET. The difference from our own society is almost shockingly clear - that was when my casual dislike of the smartphone deepened sharply to enmity which subsequent research has only intensified. If I were a Christian, I'd say that the thing is the instrument of the Devil, and a gateway to Hell. And many Christians are saying just that. I'm no Christian, but they're not wrong. All Americans care about is their damn smartphone and a perceived luxury lifestyle - effete, entitled, spoiled, oh-so-SAAAAAAFE, and pussified. Costs, both material and spiritual be damned! FUCK THAT.
If you want me - and those like me - to be your customers, its going to take more than selling us an electric toothbrush (Yes, I have one!). Integrate the smartphone if you must, but do not require one to use your product. Don't put in computerized bullshit like that which is infesting the EV industry. I don't need nor want screens, electric door handles and charge flaps, weird lighting effects, self-driving horseshit, and most definitely not any goddamned telematics - an absolute way to keep people like me away. An EV is supposed to be simple: A battery, a charger, a motor, a PWM or AC controller, and an "e-meter" for battery status. NOTHING ELSE!
Thank Goddess I only have about 20 more years on this rock this time around - I can keep my old junk running until it doesn't matter anymore. Then the world can slavishly devote themselves to their evil devices (and pay, pay, pay, pay for the "privilege"), their horrid "social media", and can be even more effete then they already are - I won't be here to care. The amount of contempt I have for this bullshit has grown several orders of magnitude since my return from Egypt. What fries my brain more than any other one thing, is the fact that most people know I'm right at one level or another, but they don't care enough to do something about it. I'm counting on the whole mess to collapse by the time I reincarnate.
Painted on a section of the old Berlin wall:
People know, but not enough people care.
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