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Isaac Rabinovitch's avatar

Tello sim card with no data costs $5/month.

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Brian Merchant's avatar

Interesting thanks — part of the issue is I'm on a family plan with Verizon, but worth looking at alternatives.

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Simon Peng's avatar

I’ve thought about the dumb phone thing a bit, too, but I always realize that the thing I’m trying to escape is less my phone and more the VOID it creates. There are too many things I actually like about my phone - podcasts, music, simple games, texts - that I feel like a dumb phone would cut me off from. It’s a nice dream, though!

As for the AI Copyright reckoning, I find it hard to be excited about that after reading Cory Doctorow’s Chokepoint Capitalism and seeing just how much copyright empowers corporations. It feels weird that people are simultaneously excited about AI companies being sued for copyright infringement AND Steamboat Willie going into the public domain. It really feels like we need a different tool to help with both of these issues (like UBI or something, so we can decouple making art from making a living) but that always feels like a pipe dream these days.

Glad the book is getting so much attention! I just finished it a few weeks ago and loved how you closed it out. Super inspiring!

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Brian Merchant's avatar

That's why I'd love a solution that's part-time; detox from your phone for the weekend, and get it all back on Monday. Perhaps but a dream, though...

Yeah, copyright is not ideal either, at least as currently constituted. But it provides an immediate bulwark against the tech co's that may at least slow them down at a time when that's direly needed.

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