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There are too many news stories in the past two days, and the relationship between entrepreneurs and couples has broken down, and the valuation of shared office companies has collapsed.

Swipe your phone, follow up on news that I know or don’t know, need or don’t need to know, and discuss with friends and colleagues about information that is not related to me. I suddenly felt the negative energy was full.

I am forced to accept a lot of information every day, and feel terrified because I missed some of them; before going out, electronic devices such as mobile phones or computers must not be forgotten, otherwise it will be uncomfortable one day.

From WeChat to email, from vibrato, red book to Weibo and Zhihu, we have a lot of apps on our mobile phones, which provide a lot of content every day to maintain the connection between us and the world.

But have you ever thought about whether these contents and contacts are really irreplaceable? Do they make you a better person, lead a more active and healthy life, or have you become a stumbling block to maintaining efficient work and healthy living?

I believe that you will occasionally agree that Fear of missing out (FOMO) has made many of us a slave to digital devices and information.

01

Experiments by Google is a loose organization. Inside the company’s employees and outsiders, some experimental small projects developed in their free time can be submitted to this organization. Once selected, they can be promoted by Google’s resources and understood and used by more people.

Yesterday, Experiments by Google released the latest set of six experimental products designed to help people achieve a healthier digital wellbeing.

One of them, when I saw it, was attracted almost instantly.

This product is called “Paper Phone”.

You may have dozens or hundreds of apps on your phone, many of which are desperately trying to grab your limited time and attention with notifications.

What Paper Phone hopes to achieve is to give you a new “mobile phone” with only the information you really need, such as tasks, calendar items, weather forecasts, notes, maps, and important contacts that you need to complete today. Number, etc. (watch the video)

And more importantly, you will find that this information does not require a small “computer” with a screen at all, as long as it is written on paper.

If you are old enough, you should still remember that there is no mobile phone, no computer to carry with you, no mobile network, no navigation, and almost all the digital products we are familiar with today are not yet popular!)

At the time, many people carried their laptops with them and recorded important information on them. In fact, the previous notebooks were today’s mobile phones.

This is the essence of Paper Phone: Since notebooks can evolve into mobile phones, mobile phones can be “degraded” into notebooks.

And, in this degrading process, Paper Phone hopes you can understand: In fact, you don’t really need the excess information provided by your phone and app.

With such a “paper phone”, I spent a relatively full day and tested whether such “digital detoxification” is right for me.

(It’s worth mentioning that as a teleworker, my life rhythm, work content and how to use the phone, and you are reading the article, you may have a huge difference. Missing for you Important features may be acceptable to me.)

02

Be spoiled first, make a good Paper PhoneThis way:

It’s very easy to make. First, I installed the Paper Phone app on a Google Pixel phone.

…Yes, it’s a bit ironic when I’m up. Paper Phone, which wants to help you replace your phone, is indeed a mobile app. Currently supports Android. However, its code is already open source on GitHub, and it is not too difficult to theoretically port to iOS and other desktop platforms.

The next step is to sign in to your Google Account because it requires access to my Google Calendar, Contacts, to-do list, and more.

I usually use Google Tasks (pictured left) to manage the to-do items, which can be read by Paper Phone. As for the calendar item, it reads my Google Calendar (second from left).

A lot of people, if there is a lot of things to do the next day, I will plan briefly the night before. In order to write this review, I deliberately added a bunch of things to my haircut, to the library, and so on…

I can select up to 7 people to add to my Paper Phone. But it’s just a piece of paper and can’t be used to make a phone call. Fortunately, I usually do not call often, and the haircut has already been reserved in advance.

(Thanks to the editor to find a happy day I can’t find…)

Paper Phone can also replace part of the map navigation work, in the most primitive way you can imagine: enter the place you want to go today in the app, it will generate a map with navigation route.

At present, Paper Phone’s navigation feature only supports one location. Therefore, if I want to go anywhere else today, I can only open my mind:

In addition to the more important features mentioned above, Paper Phone can also provide some additional small features that will help with work and life, such as weather forecasting (automatic identification of locations), notebooks, card packs (it will print out the dotted line) I need to open my own bank card slot).

At the end of the day, Paper Phone will leave a page space for you to add a Paper App to it.

In short, Paper Apps are some of the most commonly used tools and games, such as unit converters, multiplication tables, recipes, sign language tutorials, daily verses, Sudoku, fans.Palace, riddles, etc. Today’s mobile phone is “run out”, you can also fold it into a paper crane…

I made my Paper Phone, and I was satisfied with going to bed last night.

I got up this morning and found a fatal problem: I don’t have a printer at my house…

So I got up early in the morning, saved the file to the U disk, and ran to Fedex with the U disk. Waiting to “print” the phone, it’s almost half a day…

The phone that just came out is like this (for the convenience of the demo, I made one more):

After folding, you can stand on the table, like a folding screen phone! Most mobile phones can’t do it!

After proofreading, I found several bugs:

First of all, there are five schedules on my calendar today, and the result is only one calendar entry.

And, the time zone is confusing. It was a haircut at 10 am and it became a night at 5 o’clock. Later, I checked and understood what happened: Paper Phone’s development team is located in London. They don’t seem to have a time zone in the code, so all the calendar items become London local time (and forget to join the daylight saving time). .)

Secondly, Paper Phone’s optimization of Chinese doesn’t seem to be very good. My Google Tasks are basically written in Chinese, and the list of results has a typographical error:

Unfortunately, there are bugs in the two most important features of Paper Phone. This evaluation, the start is very unsatisfactory…

After printing, the time to find the next schedule (haircut) is coming soon. Get on the bus and leave.

Looking at this map, I dare say that if you have never been to it before, most people will not be able to reach their destination smoothly. Because

1. The clarity of the map is too low,
2. No text navigation instructions for turn-by-turn;
3. Navigation is automatically generated. I chose a turn and stop sign/traffic light, the slowest overall route (I don’t usually do this).

If the map feature can be improved on any of the above, the acceptance will be much better than it is now.

When I got to the barbershop, the friends in front of me didn’t, so I opened the Paper App Sudoku time. According to the scanning method I usually use, I found the bug again from 1 to 9:

Can there be two 1s in a nine-square grid?

My loud sigh was heard by the haircut aunt. She comforted me, “Don’t worry, I will be there soon..

(I also brought another Paper Phone that I tested yesterday, the Paper App added above is a maze, but fortunately it has passed…)

The next thing to experience is the payment function. Under the gaze of the aunt, I folded the phone and carefully removed the bank card from it (because the one I tested yesterday was torn).

The barber shop is a normal POS machine and can only use chips/magnetic strips. If you are in a place like Philz and other advanced coffee shops, you don’t need to take the card out, just take the Paper Phone and shake it.

The end of the haircut has arrived at noon, and I had a lunch with my friend. But as mentioned earlier, I don’t know why I only printed one item in the five calendar items today, and the time zone is wrong. Fortunately, I still remember the time and place (and wear a watch), do not need to navigate and remember the road, finally did not miss.

I don’t dare to imagine those friends who have a lot of time to use Paper Phone, which will delay many important meetings…

Because (really) didn’t bring a mobile phone, the use of the Paper Phone couldn’t be photographed. I used the notebook function to record some material and inspiration that I needed to take pictures.

Paper PhoneThe function is roughly like this.

03

It took a day for Paper Phone, I really feel very uncomfortable, but I also got a lot of things.

First of all, I found that for my work patterns and living habits, I really don’t need a lot of apps on my phone.

I am a person who remembers, and the sense of direction is not bad, so most of the places I go to do not need to navigate; my work is mainly about interviews and writings, except for the need for the Union, almost no other time. The mobile phone needs to be around, the computer is enough (and the computer can also log in to WeChat, email and other communication tools.)

Twitter, Reddit, Weibo, Vibrato – After years of working in the new media industry, I found that the side effects of these apps (such as distractions lead to inefficiency and indulging in online quarrels) are far more than The positive role (as a consultation channel) is significantly more. When the deadline for the delivery is only a few hours left, the last thing I need is the notification (at such a moment, the music becomes less important).

But this doesn’t mean that I can completely abandon my phone and go out every day like a neuropathy with a piece of paper.

The way we live and work has been completely changed by technology – there is no doubt about it.

Weeks and emails are still very important to me even if we exclude water blowing on social networks. On the day I didn’t bring my mobile phone out, I missed a message from the editor (because I was not at the computer) and missed two emails that I thought were more important.

The technology that has made a name for itself can indeed go far and enjoy the good times offline. I still need to maintain a stable, long-term online connection with the world.

As I mentioned earlier, Paper Phone does have a lot of bugs. Before convincing anyone, including me, to give it another chance, it’s best to fix these bugs quickly…

It needs to be explained here that Paper Phone is not developed by Google itself, but submitted to Google by Special Projects, a London-based design consultancy. The company was founded by a couple: industrial designer and creative director Clara G. Westaway, and experience designer and magician Adrian Westaway.

(If you are interested, you can click on the original to see their website, there are more interesting designs and inventions around the phone.)

Unlike the iPhone that changes every year, using Paper Phone means printing at least one page a day. There must be friends who have to question: Look at the simplicity, but this paper phone is not environmentally friendly?

Before you, the designers of Paper Phone have long thought of it. They found that according to the authoritative carbon footprint database and calculation method, one piece of paper is printed every day, equivalent to about 10g of carbon dioxide emitted in one year.

On the other hand, although companies such as Apple always boast 100% environmental protection, after calculation, use one hour of smart phones every day, equivalent to 1.25 tons of carbon dioxide per year (don’t forget, mobile phones need to be recharged, there are servers, cloud computing behind them) Wait a minute.)

The designer said that the birth of Paper Phone was influenced by Calm Technology. This idea has been translated as “calm technology”, although it is not necessarily believed to be elegant, but at least you can understand from Paper Phone that it is designed to inspire people from smartphones and various electronic devices. Freed from anxiety.

Maybe because I am not “Zen” enough, I don’t have a mobile phone in one day but it makes me more anxious. Perhaps for those who have financial freedom, Paper Phone can play a bigger role…

In fact, I am not completely unable to adapt to the days of using paper and pen instead of mobile phones.

For example, on weekends when you don’t need to work, if you go out for a hike with your family, I will consider putting your phone at home.The destination, the surrounding restaurants, are already on the Paper Phone; as for navigation, as long as there is sufficient information on the map, there is no need to worry about getting lost.

(It’s like someone is looking for me on weekends.)

At least, so I can spend a rare time with my family in a no-disturb, stress-free state of mind. If I persist in the long term, I believe that my “digital addiction” is likely to be quit.

After all, being aware of being addicted is the beginning of withdrawal.

At the end of the last, I want to share a little more thinking.

In the era of smartphones and apps, there is a classic phrase:

There’s an app for that.

And Paper Phone made me think about it:

Do we really need ‘that’ in the first place?