I've come to find myself bored yet overwhelmed with the current state of the internet and technology. The endless cycle of doom scrolling and flipping through the same 3 apps has been destroying my life for the last decade or so and I feel it's time to take a step back from it all. I recently wanted a video from the youtube channel Shameless Nerd that dicusses his experience moving away from the age of smart phones and taking a step back into "dumb phones". His story was compelling to me personally given my fatigue for modern age tech. The video goes over the pros and cons of this action, and I found myself inspired as the cons, to me, are non-issues and easily bypassed.
My first steps into this new era have been pretty small. However, I feel as though I'm going in the rig...
I've come to find myself bored yet overwhelmed with the current state of the internet and technology. The endless cycle of doom scrolling and flipping through the same 3 apps has been destroying my life for the last decade or so and I feel it's time to take a step back from it all. I recently wanted a video from the youtube channel Shameless Nerd that dicusses his experience moving away from the age of smart phones and taking a step back into "dumb phones". His story was compelling to me personally given my fatigue for modern age tech. The video goes over the pros and cons of this action, and I found myself inspired as the cons, to me, are non-issues and easily bypassed.
My first steps into this new era have been pretty small. However, I feel as though I'm going in the right direction. I recently received a 2014 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W800 digital camera that my roommate found secondhand, and for free! The original battery was dead so I had to order a new one, but the exterior is in great condition aside from a few scratches. For camera that's over a decade old, the photo quality isn't bad at all and definitely gives the type of nostalgia for that era in time.
This is the camera.
Photos taken with camera:
Additionally, I recently ordered a small AGPTEK M3 music player from Amazon (it was the cheapest I could find for the features I wanted). It's small and compact, as well as bringing back the 3.5mm headphone port. It also has bluetooth capabilities for my wireless headphones if desired. It's a really cool little device. Unfortunately, most file metadata is ignored, and the file names must be numbered manually for albums to be ordered correctly. That's really the only issue I have with the device. By some saving grace, I figured out iTunes for pc has a feature to do this for me in the music directory in the advanced preferences. The audio output is great, and I'll be sure to use it for a while.
I made an oopsie though. I accidentally deleted my entire iTunes library while trying to back it up onto an external drive. This resulted in all but 10 .mp3 files being banished to the shadow realm. Luckily, a large handful of the compressed zip files remained so I was able to recover between 10 and 20 albums so far. I'm going to have to dedicate hours to downloading all my music again and fixing the metadata. On the bright side, I successfully reinstalled iTunes onto my pc and I was able to move the files directory to my external hard drive instead of the native one. I don't have to do that part again and it should be a lot easier to transfer my music files into my music player afterwards. ...I am dying inside.
While I'm not completely giving up technology (it's almost impossible in this day and age), I'm hoping to move on from the dopamine addiction that smart phones and similar items produce. If you have any suggestions please feel free to leave a comment on my website. I'd love to learn about more alteratives to progress my digital detox journey.
Mentioned Video: "Finally, the dumbphone we've all been waiting for."
