Re: Phone

[Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org>]

Joe wrote: 
> On Sun, 25 Jul 2021 16:57:04 +0300
> Gunnar Gervin <dofeelok@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Will buy phone zoon, then play with this android for fun & learn.
> 
> Please comment here on your findings. Perhaps it is just me who thinks
> they are toys.

Of course smartphones are toys.

They are also reasonably powerful general purpose computers that
fit into a pocket.

Hence "I have the Internet in my pants."

Phones are books. They play music and TV shows and movies, and
of course, games.

They are maps that know where you are, can be told where you are
going, and can tell you turn-by-turn instructions on getting
there. They can track your movements and learn your face well
enough to distinguish it from a photograph of your face --
sometimes. They are the majority of photography and video
cameras on the planet.

Because phones are valid terminals for the Internet as a whole,
they are reference libraries and documentation and how-to
videos.

Also, you can use them to communicate,  and even call for help.

All of them, to a first approximation, run some kind of UNIX.
Most of them run Linux. There's a big complicated ecosystem
called Android on top of that, but definitely Linux underneath.

The requests over the last few days to install Debian on phones
are entirely blocked by practical issues, not philosophical --
it is perfectly reasonable to want control and thus privacy and 
security on such a powerful instrument. 

-dsr-