The Phone Stack

[mangosteen]

lifecollage and I were out at brunch today, and we decided to play a version of The Phone Stack Game:

Rules: lifecollage and mangosteen's house rules for the Phone Stack Game:
0. Everyone should stack their phones/pagers/etc. in the center of the table, face down.
1. First one to pick their phone up out of compulsion to "check something" pays the bill.*
2. You have to declare if you're expecting a call/text at the beginning of the game. This is for posterity, so please, be honest.
3. Emergencies and/or previously expected calls/texts don't count.
4. You are allowed to have a memo pad and pen to write down the things you'd otherwise check on your phone.
5. If you're playing the advanced version, leave the ringer audible so there's the temptation.

I have to say, it was an interesting game. It's pretty clear that having the Internet in my pants contributes to an urge to actually use it with the convenience it offers. I came up with about four things over ~45 minutes that I wanted to check/verify/read, all of which could be done with the smartphone.

Observation: It's pretty amazing how many times I thought about communicating with someone who was not in front of me during that meal. It's similar to the way I think of fasting on Yom Kippur. Every year, I get a visceral reminder of how many times my mind wanders over towards thinking about food (i.e. a lot), and I start wondering its place in my life versus other places it could be.

Assignment: Try the game. Tell me how it goes.

Oh yeah, and it was a tie. The memo pad really did help.

---

* Or pays the whole group's tip, or $2 of each person's bill, or whatever you feel like so people have some skin in the game.

Comments

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

For the record, I refuse to get a smart phone.

I have a cell phone, with no internet access, and it is almost always off (which bothers folks trying to reach me!).

I am tethered to my computer when I am home, but when I'm out, I'm out.

[mangosteen]

Makes sense.

One of the interesting things about mobile telephony c. 2012 is that, just by having a cellphone, a person implicitly sets expectations (warranted or not) about their reachability. Setting expectations otherwise is an interesting problem because, IME, it doesn't always take.

Analogously, this goes for mobile email reachability. When I go on vacation, I have to make sure that everyone around me at work knows that I'm turning off mobile access to my work email, otherwise it's assumed that I'll check it every now and then, just to not fall completely behind when I return. I beg to differ. :)

[vatine]

I have not had voicemail on my (private) mobile for all the time I've had one that is mine. This seems to break a lot of people's assumptions.

My main line of reasoning here is that when I have tried "do not bother leaving a message, it will never be checked" for the short while I had an ansaphone on my landline (many many years ago, it basically said "I can't answer the landline right now, try my mobile at NNNNN if it's urgent"), people insisted on leaving messages. So, rather than having people leave messages that I won't check, it's better if they can't leave messages in the first place.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

One of the interesting things about mobile telephony c. 2012 is that, just by having a cellphone, a person implicitly sets expectations (warranted or not) about their reachability. Setting expectations otherwise is an interesting problem because, IME, it doesn't always take.

Yes. I've been talked into agreeing to leave my phone on when en route to important work-related meetings, which makes sense, but I also made clear that I will not keep it on when I am driving.

[melebeth]

I try very hard to not be on the phone when I'm around other people. It's just polite. I don't always succeed, but it's usually because

a) the other person pulls out their phone
b) I have no idea what time it is

[mangosteen]

Completely agreed on all counts. :)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

it's a cute game for many people, due to the intrinsic difficulty :)

tending to be one of those weird people who will silence rings when i'm talking to someone, with the caveat (actually told to the person), that i MIGHT be expecting a particularly important message; beyond that, the person gets my attention.

DEFINITELY don't have a need to fidget with the thing while driving. esp texting. i just don't GET that. most people just do NOT have the ability to do it right. oh well :)

hope to play this game at a dinner or something.

message pad: cheating! i'm always pushing and popping the mental stack... but if it's important to someone's process, i can see how it might be useful.

#

[mangosteen]

I do not understand the "texting while driving" thing, and I don't expect I ever will. Human cognition just doesn't work that way.

[beah.livejournal.com]

I am guilty of texting while driving despite being fully aware of what a bad idea it is. I am compelled. Maybe its just that I like to talk?

[rosefox]

I've started defaulting to turning off the internet connectivity on my phone. It's very handy to have it when I need it--to map an address, or pull a confirmation number out of email when picking up tickets, or what have you--but the rest of the time it's too much of a distraction.

[mangosteen]

I remember working that way while up in Canada, where the data roaming rates were annoying, but not outright punitive. Thinking of Internet access as a costly, limited resource only to be used for targeted fact-finding really brought me back. :)

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I'm playing a similar-but-different game with myself lately. One of my own lack-of-mindfulness foibles is that I planplanplan, and when I'm in the middle of doing one thing, I'm working on the next. Now this is not necessarily always bad, and in some work contexts, it's downright useful. But, seriously, if I'm lying out in the grass with a sweetie and what I think of to say is something about the *next* thing we're going to do, that says to me I'm not exactly fully in the present. So whenever I find myself about to do that, I look around and find something in my immediate environment to comment or reflect on.

Perhaps this has echos into the game you describe? When you find yourself wanting to look up some information to check/verify/read, what if you made the rule that instead of writing that desire down on a pad of paper, you look around the room and find something right there in the place you are, to consider or talk about instead?

One thing I don't understand in the game you're describing, is how it keeps from being annoying when various people's devices are vibrating or ringing alerts. I keep my phone on silent in my pocket, specifically so my dinner *won't* be interrupted by ringing/buzzing sounds. Once you have a pile of them, don't they become an object of distraction?

[mangosteen]

One thing I don't understand in the game you're describing, is how it keeps from being annoying when various people's devices are vibrating or ringing alerts. I keep my phone on silent in my pocket, specifically so my dinner *won't* be interrupted by ringing/buzzing sounds. Once you have a pile of them, don't they become an object of distraction?

Not knowing the inventor's intentions, I think of it as part of the game. I personally would turn my phone off in such a situation, but it becomes an interesting object lesson if everyone leaves their phone ringers on and audible. That is, "take a look at the aggregate distraction of just 4-6 peoples' mobile devices." I can imagine people getting so annoyed that they a request a dispensation to pick up their phone, if only to turn it off. Alternately, it becomes a test of willpower if your phone is right there, and you hear it calling it for your attention, but now have an incentive not to pick it up.

[debsquared.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I really don't like that my brain seems to need constant inane amusement, which is met far too well by the smart phone or having many browser tabs open. Living in the future, rather than the present, has always been an issue for me, and seems even more so with technology enablers (disablers?).

[drwex]

I find having the phone in front of me makes it worse. if I leave it in my pocket/bag it tends not to be an issue.

When out I maintain a high level of availability because there's a very good chance that whoever is trying to reach me is my spouse or a kid-sitter. Both have global interrupt privileges. In general I'm not part of a social circle where people text or phone each other repeatedly with trivia.

Using the mobile as a knowledge repository is somewhat different. If someone asks about something, or there's a conversation topic of interest that would be eased, I have no hesitation to use the device to check IMDB or Wikipedia or whatever. In other contexts I've amused a busy evening-partner by reading aloud from the device.

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

because there's a very good chance that whoever is trying to reach me is my spouse or a kid-sitter

Yup. That was part of the global exception in rules #2/3.

OTOH, I've seen adults so distracted by texts/emails from kids or sitter that they don't enjoy the evening or outing they're on. Similarly, I've had folks at work in meetings or trainings whose phones ring or buzz constantly with calls & messages from children or family, thus keeping them from being engaged in what they're doing. I wonder if giving the younglings their own mobile devices turns the tables on "helicopter parenting" to "constant contact child-ing"?

Note: I'm going to guess that none of what I just said applies to you and yours, because you aren't the sorts. But it's something I've seen elsewhere in the world, and was musing.

[drwex]

Yeah ours mostly don't, and the people who sit our kids are generally in line with our (social group) philosophy which I think isn't that intrusive. Our children do interrupt in the way that kids do, which isn't necessarily in line with how adults might do it. But on the grasping hand, we're somewhat old-fashioned compared to some parents - we don't even give ours their own phones yet, though I see many of their peers with electronics.

[skreeky]

I don't understand "emergencies don't count." You can't possibly know whether it's an emergency if you don't at least see who is calling. Is individually assigned unique ringtones for your contacts cheating? What if your phone doesn't do that? Mine doesn't - so do I get to see who's calling when it rings its generic ring before I either do or don't pick up?

[blk]

I don't understand this either. How do you know what is an emergency without answering? Even if I know who is calling, it could be any number of things. I've had my workday interrupted by my kids' school calling to say that child doesn't remember where they should go after school and could I please tell them (not emergency) and also calls saying child just threw up multiple times and needs to be picked up now (semi-emergency; I need to take some kind of immediate action).

When I'm out I rarely even GET phone calls, so in my experience, unexpected phone calls (from known contacts) are more likely to be emergencies/time-sensitive conversations than expected ones. (Texts are always ignorable unless expected, which usually doesn't happen during planned time out.)

I understand the general desire to be more present when spending time in person with other people, and agree it is a good one. But this is one game that I don't find appealing.

[blk]

Oh, and I might note that I just came from 5 days of camping where I used my phone to:

a) check the weather forecast/radar and share with friends a couple times
b) check messages once a day (in private) in case of semi-emergencies
c) browse internet for a few minutes (in private) while settling down to sleep
d) look up the time a couple times when a schedule was relevant
e) find a song that a geeky friend really wanted to listen to right then and there after it came up in conversation
f) browse internet and clean inbox (and answer this lj post) via laptop while passengering in car for a couple hundred miles along interstate (conversation, podcasts, and naps took up the other several hundred miles)

Overall I carried my phone a max of a couple waking hours each day, and I don't personally feel that doing so interfered with my general presentness of the weekend. Other people may feel differently.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

My phones are very dumb. One of them has no voicemail. The voicemail on the other tends to fill up with phone spam. But I do glance at the incoming number and answer it if I recognize the number.

Mom has given up calling me on my phone, which was kind of the point. It's been an interesting exercise.

The thing I end up checking on them most frequently is the time, though I do use the calculator function at the end of the meal to figure a reasonable tip.

People tell me that smartphones are useful but so far I have stuck with my cellular modem dongle attached to a laptop. Somehow this has not made people think I have constant email address.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I would easily win at this game, except that I could never play it.

1. Putting one's phone on the table is rude.

2. Putting one's phone on the table and leaving it there invites someone to walk by and steal it.

Ignoring one's phone while at dinner or in a movie or talking to someone else in person or whatever is easy. Although, I have been known to pull it out to check facts or what have you, but only if it's a group endeavor.

But the concept of this game is actually kind of interesting when taken in the context of past telephone etiquette. It used to be that any time someone used a telephone it was for an important cause. So getting up to answer it was almost encouraged, because some distant relative could be dying. It took a long time for most people to be able to use their answering machines as a screening device when at home. "But, I have to answer it!" "No, you don't, listen, it's a salesman! Don't pick up that phone!" "But!" (And I continue to know older people who are compelled to answer their home phone, no matter what. And now we have people who are surgically attached to their communication devices. So very odd.

I've never had that mentality. The phone is for my convenience, not yours. Now that there's voicemail, leave a message, and I'll determine how important your call is to me and fit it in when able to do so. But, ultimately, my device, my rules.

[cathijosephine.livejournal.com]

Hmm...i think I might win this game.  Especially as I am just back from a road trip through Canada, where I had my cell on airplane mode. 

Also, I was a late adopter to the idea of constant connectivity.  I never have enjoyed talking on the phone.  As I do not know much first aid, nor do I drive, nor can I give legal advice, I felt there was no emergency in which I could truly be valuable enough for immediate need. 

I did eventually give in to connectivity when I got my first phone with physical keyboard.  I now enjoy the opportunity it provides for spontaneous get-togethers, and I love being in constant touch with my closest friends via  Gtalk.  However, when I am with friends in meat space, I try to give them priority over those in virtual space.  On top of that, I feel there is something sacred about sharing meals in meat space with folk I don't see often that demands undivided attention, especially over virtual folk I chat with all day long.