This may be one of the few times we're on the same page -- death to the smartphone deniers! *raises pitchfork*

If the world ever needs a shake-up then going back to the phone-age (I mean phone calls, not texts and smartphones!) would probably do it. After the first few weeks of no internet I think we'd see refugees emerging from their houses and figuring out ways to survive in the new world

Google Project Ara - Modular Smartphone Prototype has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

I have a smartphone, but I dont use it much. Well I do use it much, but 99% of the time as a desk clock/alarm clock. Much prettier and far less power consuming than one of these radio clocks, plus a bigger display and many more options as a clock. Of course I also use it as a smartphone, but very rarely. For example I dont use it to spend my time in the doctors waiting room. I do check my emails when I am out, but only when I have free time, as in taking a break. The most important uses for me on a smartphone are not really usable anyway. Surfing on the Internet is far too clunky with a tiny touch screen and having to turn on GPS and waiting 10 mins for it to get a fix makes using it stupid too. I wont keep GPS on permanently after all this NSA crap and because it simply sucks the battery dry even quicker.

So basically, 19 reasons not to be a hipster douchebag that have nothing whatsoever to do with owning a smartphone.

Oh and if you're "posting selfies on facebook" with your phone, then you're participating in the same narcissistic crap as everyone else, just less efficiently.

They're a tool, and a useful one at that. Having one or not will not make you a better or worse person than you already are.

1. So you are suggesting people who live on 40p a day would give two squirty shits about a smartphone? That is a result of global economic issues of which one person smashing a phone (they presumably own) is negligible to the point of complete irrelevance. Non sequitur, if this is really a concern to you then you need to go after the corruptions and inequalities in our very financial system. Handing down a phone (which is likely near the end of its useful life anyway) is not going to change anything of significance here.

2. I'm suggesting you are making an entirely subjective value judgement about the pleasure and practical use one could derive from the same investment of money/material. Lets not forget he generated around $7000 of personal income from a £50-100 investment. But more than that, perhaps to some people the pleasure and entertainment of smashing that phone was comparable to other activities that might cost the same (e.g. a night of drinking or a weekend away could easily exceed the cost of that handset). Are you suggesting spending £50-100 on leisure activities etc. is morally reprehensible? Let's not forget "smartphones" don't do anything essential for most people, they are luxury items. If you have a problem with 1st world culture that's absolutely fine (laudible even) but you can't be singling out this guy for making a very successful comedy skit when there are people everywhere who's lifestyles could be politely described as "a decadent waste of atoms".

3. Absolutely nothing is stopping that smashed phone from being recycled, many shops would give you a £50-100 trade in on a new handset even in that state as they are typically just melted down anyway (and your new shiny phone contract is worth more to them than caring about the state of your bag of broken phone bits).

Besides as a matter of pedantry my point clearly stands, doing NOTHING in a drawer is clearly inferior to generating $7000, and providing 2mins of hillarity!?!?!?!? (the comparison was between hammer and drawer not drawer and charity) What you did there was called a "straw man" (i.e. twist my word's to make a different argument that helps make your own point)

4. The phone is old and they are not built to last (again feel free to rant on our disposable culture but leave this guy out of it) as @Payback pointed out it's probably knackered anyway.


Somewhere in your argument is some righteous and commendable rage about the inequalities of the global market but you're focusing it in the wrong direction here. Be angry at the CEO and shareholders of Samsung who profit from human death and suffering in the Coltan mines, the Corrupt banks that hold a fake debt over the poor populations of the world or the Complicit governments that support them. Or maybe go after the Ideologues and philosophers that conceived and spread the culture of consumer and corporate greed driven economics.


Basically anything but rage at this guy for making a IMHO pretty funny video on a budget that utterly pales into insignificance compared to just about anything else.



Could he have handed it down? Sure. Could he have traded it for a crate of jack Daniels, a half ounce of weed, an animatronic chicken alarm clock, a present for his wife etc. etc. etc.?

Your argument taken to its logical conclusion would condemn anyone that spends money or resources on anything other than practical necessities or charity. I'm not saying that's what you meant, but that's what your argument as stated invites.

7 million views = about $7000 in youtube ad revenue. Sound investment I'd say!

Also that is actually a pretty old handset, probably only worth £50-100ish now at most.


Now if we're talking about the Congolese workers who mined the ore and the Chinese sweatshop staff that assembled it that's another matter, but then that goes for anyone who owns or has owned a "smartphone". How one chooses to use it irrelevant, smashing it with a hammer is no different to most of the mindless procrastination they get used for anyway.

It's a highly disposable industry and this beats just languishing in a drawer somewhere or being dropped down the toilet etc.

I hear-tell them DHS Agents got'em that new '12-Square City Blocks' App on their smartphones now...

And here I thought the claims around his four laptops were put to rest in July of last year or, at the very latest, after his meeting with Ray MacGovern, Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake in October.

There was nothing of substance on those laptops and to suggest otherwise with any credibility demands extraordinary proof.

Why?

Because of two primary reasons, as far as I am concerned:

- Any of Snowden's claims has yet to proven false. The entire apparatus is trying and they failed miserably so far. Probably because Snowden actually knows what he's talking about, unlike such cranks as Rep. Peter King.

- Snowden spent years working within the intelligence industry (CIA, NSA, private contractors) and he has proven to be careful and meticulous. Unlike the public (or the British MoD), he'd know better than to transport any sensitive information on a device like a laptop or a smartphone. Or an external harddrive. Or a disk. He'd use flash memory, possibly a thumb drive, probably an SD card -- the less embedded controllers a device has, the better. Heavily encrypted, of course, and if anyone doesn't believe that crypto works... tough luck, I'm done trying to convince people otherwise.

So, the only people who received data from him are Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. American journalists reporting on American issues, just like he said.

As for the the revelation of "tons of national secrets and techniques": he has revealed nothing. Let me say that again: Snowden has revealed nothing.

He has empowered members of the press, the fourth estate, to do their bloody jobs and fullfil their role as watchdog over the government, something they failed at miserably in this particular regard. All revelations happen at the discretion of those journalists who are now the sole proprietors of the Snowden-documents.

If, however, you don't subscribe to the notion of a free press as a line of defence against government abuse, then I can't change your mind.

By the way, "putting American lives at risk" should have received a trademark by now, the way it has been waved around to kill uncomfortable conversations. I vividly remember how desperate they were to find proof that the Afghan/Iraqi War Logs and the Gitmo Files were endangering lives. As far as I know, they never found any. And as far as I know, all releases based on Snowden-documents were carefully chosen and redacted where neccessary to protect the identity of human assets. All claims to the contrary need to provide evidence.

But I'm glad to see that the "American industry" has found its way into the argument. At least we don't have to pretend that this is solely about terrorism anymore. Industrial espionage, diplomatic advantages and... keeping your own population in check.

Yay! It's just like the old days.

Oh wait, I forgot. My country has been under full scale surveillance by the US, the British and the French since the late '40s, so it's actually business as usual.

Give me a smartphone that can record both sides of the conversation to your phone's memory (WITHOUT using the speakerphone function) and I'm sold. In particular, I'd like to record a conversation I'm having on a bluetooth headset. It can't be done as far as I know.

...Oh-and for FUCKSAKE get rid of the prison industry in America, educate and embrace the African American and Hispanic bulk of the occupants of the same (race war continues, in the form of safety for the "LAW ABIDING"), and pick a dead city to stuff all the goddamn gang-bangers in. There are some really great humans locked-away forever there who have something to contribute to society, but the prison is nothing but a training-ground for another generation of humans who will be used to justify totalitarian control, martial law, and the annihilation of all freedoms for all of humanity.

Escape form New York would be a wonderful scenario. Let Dick fucking Cheney and his types set-up their little summer-homes there along with their residences and bases of operation.

I don't want a police state unless it has limited borders full of all the hind-brain motherfuckers in it-The rest of us can live in peace and comfort.

Legalize all drugs at the same time, and let those with weak wills, off themselves into a stupor. They won't have to steal your little X-boxes and smartphones, your vehicles and TV's, to buy their drugs. Give em all they want. I'd rather trip-over junkies than have savages invade my domicile to buy crack.

Are you two talking about the version that DARPA employee's kids have had since April on their smartphones??

I am a firm believer in "trickle up " economics. People at this level of income will virtually put every single penny they earn back into the local economy. That's even better then all of them buying a "smartphone" which has more to do with profiting a huge corporation and creating more jobs in other countries.

I never got "trickle down" economics. It doesn't matter how wealthy you are, at some point, you just have enough of a particular thing. A billionaire might have an absolutely top of the line smartphone, but he still really only needs one smartphone.

OTOH, if you do the opposite of trickle down (which I guess would be "rising tide", but the voodoo guys stole that one already), i.e. pay the poor more, then they will buy more stuff, which in turn will make the rich richer. So continuing the analogy, instead of giving $20000 to the rich, give 20 poor people $1000. Then they might buy 10 smartphones, which is obviously better for the economy.

Note to pedants: I am aware that poor people probably won't buy an expensive smartphone... it's an analogy. Don't take it literally.