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EDITORIAL SUnDAY, AUgUST 12, 2018 4 Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam Telephone: +8802-9104683-84, Fax: 9127103 e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com Sunday, August 12, 2018 Accreting lands from the sea A present formidable problem for Bangladesh apparently is land shortage. But there is also good news. Although there has been a long standing projection about a part of Bangladesh's coastal areas sinking into the sea in the near future from the greenhouse syndrome, regularly received satellite imageries and other tangible supporting evidences suggest that Bangladesh is rather about to receive the gift of a huge land mass from its adjoining sea from gradual deposition of silt brought down by rivers. The size of this land mass, eventually, could be as big as the present size of Bangladesh or even bigger. But it will depend considerably on what the Bangladeshis themselves do-- like the people of Holland did --for lands to rise from the sea and for the same to be joined to the mainland. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is no doubt the most authoritative forum as regards worldwide climate change and its consequences. But some years ago, IPCC had to eat its own words and confess that some of its projections were flawed such as the imminent disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers that could most dramatically raise sea levels in the South Asian region. Scientific data also indicate that nothing can be absolutely said, yet, about the extent of sea level rise or the height of its occurrences in different parts of the world. Thus, it may eventually become quite possible for Bangladesh to gain in elevation or new lands in its coastal areas in the likelihood of deposition of silt in its coastal areas being faster or greater than the anticipated sea level rise in this region. Unfortunately, nothing has been noted so far in the country's annual development plans (ADPs) to the effect that successive governments have been paying attention to this issue. Hardly allocations have been made over the years to build dams and other structures to put a pace to the process of accretion of coastal lands. This attitude, undoubtedly, is a serious neglect of the vital national interest. Already, substantial territories have surfaced in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. Some of these places have completely surfaced and have human habitations on them while others remain submerged during tides to emerge with the ebbing of the tide. The latter types of accreted lands are likely to gain in elevation to be permanently joined to the mainland. Indeed, a part of present day Bangladesh including the districts of Faridpur, Barisal, Noakhali, Patuakhali, etc., were formed in this manner over time. The country is likely to get a generous response from the international community in matters of fund availability and technical supports if it can show that it is really keen to accrete more lands and has put the endeavour under a systematic policy framework. Holland is one country which has the most experience in getting lands out of the sea. Bangladesh may not have to embark on projects on the same scale as were carried out in Holland because of its relatively better elevation. It can use its huge reservoir of cheap manpower to build simpler projects to get the same kind of results as were achieved in Holland. But for this purpose it needs to engage in a time-bound and result oriented framework of assistance and consultation with that country. Even if Bangladesh ultimately requires sophisticated engineering works along its coasts like in Holland, it should engage in this task with no loss of time. Government in Bangladesh should go all out to get a major part of the international fund now under mobilization to help out the countries most likely to be affected by climate change. These funds ought not to be spent largely on attractive environmental projects such as planting trees along the coasts, dredging of rivers, etc., but on what would be the most effective long term defences against sea level rise like the sea-walls in Holland. Even if external aid is not forthcoming, the government can proceed with dams and other structures where these will yield almost immediate benefits in the form of lands rising from the sea on a sustainable basis. The taking up of such projects and their successful execution are quite possible for Bangladesh by mobilising its own resources and applying its own expertise. One may say that the cyclone hazards can be serious in the coastal areas. But these hazards are not as these used to be in the past. Few people have died from these cyclones in recent years and much less resources were destroyed from cyclones . The creation of a network of cyclone shelters and other forms of preparedness for disasters have led to such favourable developments. With the establishment of a greater number of cyclone shelters and extending the system of preparedness, there would be no reason for a far bigger number of people than at present not to be living and working safely in viable occupations in the coastal areas including the already accreted lands and the about to be accreted lands. Cooperation with Israel threatens Russia's Iran alliance Since russia has taken on a greater role in Middle Eastern affairs, Israeli officials have become frequent visitors to Moscow. The russian-Israeli relationship is different to the ties linking Israel to the US or Iran to russia. It is particularly unusual when considering the alliances in the region: Israel and Iran are sworn enemies, while the US and russia are key rivals in the region. The improved Israeli-russian ties of recent months pose a potential threat to the years-old russian-Iranian partnership. In Syria, both Moscow and Tehran are supporting Bashar Assad's regime at all costs, and it is no secret that without them Assad might well have been swept from office. However, the russian- Iranian relationship is no bed of roses. Both countries have different motivations in the Syrian war and divergent views on the country's future, and every step taken toward Syria's future being resolved sees russian and Iranian interests come closer to colliding. russia considers cooperation with Israel as serving its interests in Syria, while Tehran regards the increasing closeness between Tel Aviv and Moscow as a means of containing its influence in Syria and in the region. Needless to say, for russia, Israel is not regarded as an enemy state, which is how Iran perceives it. For now, Israeli-Iranian tension in the AFTEr being cast out of the White House and Breitbart News, Stephen K Bannon, often referred to as the mastermind of Donald Trump's US presidential campaign, has vowed to remake Europe. His organization, called "The Movement" and based in Brussels, aims to unite Europe's right-wing populists and take down the European Union in its current form. Bannon sees this effort as part of a "war" between populism and "the party of Davos," between the white, Christian, patriotic "real people" (in the words of his British supporter, Nigel Farage) and the cosmopolitan globalist elites. In the media, at least, Bannon is taken seriously. It would seem to be a tall order for this permanently disheveled American media blowhard and promoter of cranky ideas about cyclical cataclysms to change the history of Europe. Despite meeting such right-wing luminaries as Hungary's strongman viktor Orbán, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and Boris Johnson, the clownish former British foreign secretary, all of whom wish him well, Bannon has almost no experience in European politics. He stunned a sympathetic audience in Prague by ranting against "unfair competition" from foreign countries that use cheap labor. Much of the Czech republic's gross domestic product comes from exports, for just that reason. But the main problem facing Bannon's effort is that right-wing populist leaders are a disparate bunch. Bannon himself is region is an issue that the Kremlin is not taking very seriously. However, if tensions escalate and there is the threat of a military confrontation, then Moscow will have to pay attention. russia would not allow such a confrontation to take place; not out of any concern for its ally, but for its own strategic interests in Syria, which could be the first targets. For russia, the preservation of its naval base in Tartus and air base in Latakia are very important for its long-term Middle East plans. In contrast, Iran's strategies in Syria are based on a "zero-sum game" against Israel, and escalation of the conflict there would serve its interests. Time will tell how long the russian-Iranian partnership, which seems not to go beyond Syria, will last. Israel has mostly stayed out of the Syrian conflict, but it has a Catholic reactionary with fantasies, fueled by his love of Hollywood heroes, of being a warrior against the forces of evil. Orbán is an autocrat who exploits popular disillusion with postcommunism by blaming immigrants and the EU, even though the Hungarian economy depends on the single market and subsidies from Brussels. Northern European demagogues, such as Geert Wilders, see Islam as the main threat to Western civilization, but defend such causes as gay rights (because Muslims supposedly hate them). In Britain, Johnson stands for, well, Johnson, but his fellow Brexiteers are less interested in the Islamic threat than in a grandiose version of English nationalism. France's National Front, now called the National rally, is a Le Pen family enterprise trying hard to dissociate itself from its anti-Semitic, vichyite roots. SInEM CEngIz ADRIAn LOBE carried out a shadow war against Iran, and russia seems to turn a blind eye to the Israeli moves that harm its ally in Tehran. Moscow prefers to adopt a passive stance in the face of Israel's air campaign against pro-Iranian forces in Syria, despite the fact that it has powerful radar and surface-to-air missiles that could easily intervene. Moreover, russia is still trying to preserve the agreement designed to stabilize the situation at the border between Israel and Syria, which involved pro-Iranian forces pulling back from the area. Also, in order to avoid a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, russia has moved to deploy its troops on the occupied Golan Heights frontier, while it also plans to set up observation points in that area. For now, russia's approach to Israel is more favorable than Iran because its stakes with Tel Aviv are higher than with Tehran. russia As was true of European fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, it is not easy to find much ideological coherence in these various political strands, let alone in Bannon's Movement. What they all have in common, however, is reliance on animus. As was true of European fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, it is not easy to find much ideological coherence in these various political strands, let alone in Bannon's Movement. What they all have in common, however, is reliance on animus, sometimes directed at Muslims, sometimes at any kind of immigrants, very often against the EU, and always against the liberal elites - whom British Prime Minister Theresa May described as "citizens of nowhere." There is something conspiratorial about this animus, a notion that the common man is at the mercy of a shadowy network of string-pullers that rules the world. In the days when Josef wants better control over Syria and is aware this cannot happen without coordination with Israel. It is also in search of new trading partners in the region and Israel appears to be a possibility. russia could increase its influence in the region as a whole not by confronting a US ally, but by joining with it. Moscow is quite aware that any possible confrontation in the region may bring the Americans back in a bigger way, so it tries to avoid this by containing both Iran and Israel. On the other side, Israel wants to protect its security interests and create a channel through which to talk to Moscow and convey its concerns regarding Iran. With all of these mutual interests, Iran, despite sharing a significant partnership with russia, is aware that it cannot count on Moscow's support in its plans for Syria or Israel. Given the current uncertainty in the region, it is likely that Israelirussian coordination will continue and may even increase, at the expense of Iranian concerns. This will make it even harder for russia to walk the thin line between the two rivals and the balancing act it is carrying out may collapse. Time will tell how long the russian-Iranian partnership, which seems not to go beyond Syria, will last. Source : Arab news Steve Bannon's European adventure IAn BURUMA Stalin identified enemies of the people as "rootless cosmopolitans" (meaning Jews), the headquarters of this omnipotent global network was thought to be New york, with branch offices in London and Paris. Now it is located in Brussels. Immigrants, particularly from Muslim countries, bear the brunt of populist propaganda. Bannon wrote the first draft of Trump's so-called Muslim ban, barring immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries. Orbán has fortified his borders to protect "Christian civilization." Salvini wants to deport all illegal migrants from Italy. The Brexit campaign, led by Johnson, warned British voters that their country would soon be "swamped" by Turkish immigrants, even though Turkey is nowhere close to joining the EU. But however unpleasant antiimmigrant rhetoric and policies may be, the main target of the populists' ire remains the sinister globalist elite, represented by George Soros and other liberals whom they accuse of promoting human rights, compassion for refugees, and religious tolerance to further their own interests. They are the ones who are supposedly swamping Christian lands with aliens. They are stabbing Western civilization in the back. Bannon has actually expressed admiration for Soros, even though he sees him as a kind of Satan. He wants to be the Soros of the right. Source : Asia times Welcome to the metadata society - and beware EvEry day, Google processes 3.5 billion search queries. Users google everything: resumes, diseases, sexual preferences, criminal plans. And in doing so, they reveal a lot about themselves; more so, probably, than they would like. From the aggregated data, conclusions can be drawn in real time about the emotional balance of society. What's the general mood like? How's the buying mood? Which product is in demand in which region at this second? Where is credit often sought? Search queries are an economic indicator. Little wonder, then, that central banks have been relying on Google data to feed their macroeconomic models and thus predict consumer behaviour. The search engine is not only a seismograph that records the twitches and movements of the digital society, but also a tool that generates preferences. And if you change your route based on a Google Maps traffic jam forecast, for example, you change not only your own behaviour, but also that of other road users by changing the parameters of the simulation with your own data. Using the accelerometers built into smartphones, Google can tell if someone is cycling, driving or walking. If you click on the algorithmically generated search prediction Google proposes when you type "Merkel", for instance, the probability increases that the autocomplete mechanism will also display this for other users. The Israel has mostly stayed out of the Syrian conflict, but it has carried out a shadow war against Iran, and Russia seems to turn a blind eye to the Israeli moves that harm its ally in Tehran. Moscow prefers to adopt a passive stance in the face of Israel's air campaign against pro-Iranian forces in Syria, despite the fact that it has powerful radar and surface-to-air missiles that could easily intervene. Immigrants, particularly from Muslim countries, bear the brunt of populist propaganda. Bannon wrote the first draft of Trump's so-called Muslim ban, barring immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries. Orbán has fortified his borders to protect "Christian civilization." Salvini wants to deport all illegal migrants from Italy. The Brexit campaign, led by Johnson, warned British voters that their country would soon be "swamped" by Turkish immigrants, even though Turkey is nowhere close to joining the EU. mathematical models produce a new reality. The behaviour of millions of users is conditioned in a continuous feedback loop. Continuous, and controlled. The Italian philosopher and media theorist, Matteo Pasquinelli, who teaches at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, has put forward the hypothesis that this explosion of data exploitation makes a new form of control possible: A "metadata society". With metadata, new forms of biopolitical control could be used to establish mass and behavioural control, such as online activities in social media channels or passenger flows in public transport. "Data," Pasquinelli writes, "are not numbers, but diagrams of surfaces, new landscapes of knowledge that inaugurated a vertiginous perspective over the world and society as a whole: The eye of the algorithm, or algorithmic vision." The accumulation of figures and numbers through the information society has reached a point where they become a space and create a new topology. The metadata society can be understood as an extension of the cybernetic control society, writes Pasquinelli: "Today it is no longer a matter of determining the position of an individual (the data), but of recognising the general trend of the mass (the metadata)." The Italian philosopher and media theorist, Matteo Pasquinelli, who teaches at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, has put forward the hypothesis that this explosion of data exploitation makes a new form of control possible: A "metadata society". With metadata, new forms of biopolitical control could be used to establish mass and behavioural control, such as online activities in social media channels or passenger flows in public transport. Pasquinelli doesn't see a problem in the fact that individuals are under tight surveillance (as they were in Germany under the Stasi), but rather in the fact that they are measured and that society as a whole becomes calculable, predictable and controllable. As an example, he cites America's National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance program SKyNET, in which terrorists were identified using mobile phone data in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The program analysed and put together the daily routines of 55 million mobile phone users like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle: Who travels with whom? Who shares contacts? Who's staying over at his friend's house for the night? A classification algorithm analysed the metadata and calculated a terror score for each user. "We kill people based on metadata," former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden boasted. The cold-blooded contempt for humanity expressed in this sentence makes one shiver. The military target is no longer a human person, but only the sum of its metadata. The "algorithmic eye" doesn't see a terrorist, just a suspicious connection in the haze of data clouds. As a brutal consequence, this means that whoever produces suspicious links or patterns is liquidated. Thousands of people were killed in drone attacks ordered on the basis of SKyNET's findings. It is unclear how many innocent civilians were killed in the process. The methodology is controversial because the machine's learning algorithm only learnt from already identified terrorists and blindly reproduced these results. What this means is that whoever had the same trajectories - that is, metadata - as a terrorist, was suddenly considered one himself. The question is how sharp the algorithmic vision is set.a's chemical weapons use. Source : Gulf News
SCIENCE & TECH SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 2018 5 What's new in Android 9 Pie Most of the time we spend on our phones is used for chatting - via myriad new ways of communicating. Photo: Nicolas Asfouri Have smartphones killed the art of conversation? Nosheen Iqbal News of the un-newsy kind this week, fresh from an Ofcom study designed to confirm a belief in our worst selves: we are a nation addicted to smartphones but are repelled by the idea of making or taking voice calls. Is this the death of conversation? Not quite, but it's certainly more than a blip in the cultural history of communication: in 2017, for the first time, the number of voice calls - remember, those things you did with your actual voice on your actual phone - fell in the UK. Meanwhile, internet addiction keeps growing, presumably because we haven't quite worked out what to do with all those hours we're saving on talking. More than three-quarters (78%) of British adults own a smartphone, and we check them on average every 12 minutes. That adds up to 24 hours a week online via our phones - much of that time swallowed up by modern-style chat on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with some left over for texting. It has taken a toll on talking, sure, but few smartphone users might claim to feel less connected as a result. Conversation is delightful, but unsaid rules for how and when it happens have been established collectively over the past decade or so. No one - except your mum or someone asking about an accident you were never in - just calls these days. Some people will text to warn of a call; others will hold a conversation by swapping voice notes back and forth. Many of us can agree that voicemail, as a concept, is dead: anyone listening to or leaving one has arguably too much time and too little regard for the recipient. Who likes listening to voicemails? The menu, the navigation, the unnecessary news that an energy service provider has been in touch to offer you a different electricity package. I hover near a generation in which long and pointless phone calls to the friends you'd spent all day with was an essential post-school afternoon ritual. Every minute was itemised, every telling-off for the small fortune this was costing, accounted for on the quarterly bill. Later, in my first taste of work as an intern at this paper, I was able to learn how journalists did their jobs because they were talking on the phone and to each other all day. Five years later, I was working at a start-up where real talk was at a minimum: conversations had migrated to the late, great MSN Messenger. Typing your talk officially took over. Now, the idea of ringing someone for "a chat" has a quaint, retro quality. I can, and will, talk you under the table, but phone calls are a luxury usually reserved for about five people: my mum, my sister, two best friends and my editor, obviously. Even then, I'm rubbish at picking up. Much is made about smartphones leading to dumber conversation - amid claims that the art of chatter has been lost. Arguably, however, conversation has simply been rebooted and reconfigured. Take the myriad ways in which we can and do communicate now. It's a given that I will spend an embarrassing portion of my day glued to a screen (it's work!) and much of that will be chatting (again, it's work!). Unlike most people I know, I don't use WhatsApp for one-on-one conversations but I think it's the best way to conduct group chats: the family thread, your best friends, the meme crew, and the splinter cells set up around someone's birthday drinks. It's here that modern comms can be richer, and smooth out awkward conversational lags and silences: the speed of a group chat, the ability to send pictures, links, songs, videos and emojis - emojis! - shouldn't be sniffed at. My parents aren't texters and my cousins in Pakistan prefer to write in phonetic Urdu; I maintain that the emoji is the most universal and democratic form of communication. No, a winky smiley face love heart kiss unicorn fish can't replace a meaningful conversation with my dad about my bathroom pipes, but a bit of daily WhatsApp contact - a Good Morning! meme from him, 43 emojis from my niece - keeps us connected when time and life don't allow for a Big Catchup Call. There's more: texting, for proper, considered, well-punctuated missives; iMessage for barely legible babble on my iPhone; GChat on Gmail for day-long office inanity; Facebook for lurking on other people's conversations; Twitter for lurking on other people's opinions, and Snapchat for pretending I'm in a demographic attractive to advertisers. Talk isn't dead. It's just presented in ways that are to the point, quicker and easier to articulate. What we lose in tone we make up for in emoji. Technology Desk Google's next version of Android finally has a name: "Pie". It's rolling out right now and is packed with new features, from extended battery life to new gesture navigation. Pie marks one of the biggest changes in the way Android looks and feels in some years, with a more colourful interface, a collection of new movement animations and rounded edges on almost everything. Thankfully, it's still as fast as Android Oreo, at least on Google's Pixel smartphones. Right now, if you have one of the recent Google Pixel smartphones or the Essential Phone via an over-the-air update. Either wait for the notification to update or head to Settings > System > Advanced > System update and hit the "Check for update" button. Others will have to wait for their smartphone manufacturer to deliver the update. Those with phones such as the OnePlus 6 that were included in the Android P beta programme over the last couple of months will probably see the update soon. Those with Samsung, Huawei or other mainstream manufacturer devices may have to wait some time to see the update on their phones. Android 9 Pie is a free update for eligible devices - if you are ever asked to pay for Android updates, someone is trying to con you. Google has introduced the biggest change to the way you get around in Android since the traditional three buttons of home, back and overview (recently used apps). The new gesture navigation button occupies the same space as the traditional on-screen buttons, but the home button is now a pill-shape and it moves. Tap it to go home, flick it up to see recently used apps, swipe upwards twice or pull it up further to get to the app drawer, or hold it down to activate Google Assistant. Youcan also drag it to the right to switch to the last app (similar to the double tap of the overview button) or drag and hold to cycle through recently used apps. The back button still appears when needed, but the overview button has gone. The gestures are not activated by default for now, which means to try them out head to Settings > System > Gestures and toggle the "Swipe up on Home button" option. It's a small change, but arguably the most useful. Now when you have rotation lock turned on to stop the screen rotating orientation accidentally, and you turn on your phone intentionally, a little button appears in the navigation bar. Tap the button to rotate the screen from portrait to landscape or vice versa - perfect for those few times that you actually want the screen to rotate but not, say, when you're lying down in bed. Android 9 Pie has moved the time from the top right of the status bar to the top left. It may not seem the most dramatic of changes, but it makes room for screen cutouts called "notches", as found on the OnePlus 6 and Huawei P20 Pro, among others. Google has decreed that only two notches may be used on one screen for it to be able to run its version of Android, so at least you won't have to deal with one in each side of the screen. Short of navigation gestures, Adaptive Battery is the biggest improvement to Android. Using systems developed by Alphabet's AI-outfit DeepMind, Adaptive Smartphone users will want a piece of the Android 9 Pie - what should they expect? Photo: Google Battery learns an individual's usage patterns and directs the power to only the apps you need at the time you need them for more predictable day-to-day battery life. So far users of the Android P beta programme on Google Pixels have found an increase in battery life in the region of 20%, which bodes well for longer-lasting Android smartphones. AI has also been integrated into Android Pie's brightness control, so it will now learn from your manual adjustments - something you could be forgiven for thinking already happened. What happens when Airbnb goes wrong? Patrick Collinson When Damian White and family finally arrived at the three-bed villa in Portimão, Portugal, they booked through Airbnb - after spending hours searching for it with incomplete address details - they didn't realise this was just the start of their holiday from hell. At the villa, no one was there to welcome them or give them the keys. The property was locked up and unattended. Calls to the owners went unanswered, and they could not get through to Airbnb. Unable to find anywhere else to stay and with the night closing in, the White family were forced to spend the first night of their holiday trying to catch a few hours sleep in their small hire car. "We had no reply from the host or Airbnb to repeated phone calls, so we slept in the car until we found emergency accommodation," says White. "Due to the late notice and the need to rent a new three bed villa the cost to us far exceeded the original cost." The only villa they were able to find at short notice was available for just one night - at a cost of €395- and then they had to move and unpack again 24 hours later. After that, they were able to find a A reader discovers that he and his family are locked out of a villa they booked on Airbnb. Photo: Clare Stephenson villa for the rest of their holiday, but in total they were £1,700 out of pocket. Eventually, Damian was able to get through to Airbnb. It apologised, and said the behaviour of the missing host was unacceptable. It offered to refund the original £514.93 the family had paid for the villa and gave them a $50 coupon to be used against a future Airbnb booking. But that was it - there was no offer to refund the huge extra expense they had suffered. Damian was furious. Their holiday had been ruined, they had to pay out huge amounts for a new villa, and been forced to sleep in a car. It didn't help that Airbnb's customer service response was gushingly inappropriate. "I hope you're having a wonderful afternoon so far," Airbnb said in an email to Damian as he was in the midst of sorting out the disaster. "Thank you so much for being an Awesome Airbnb User Damian and have a great day!" it added. While still abroad, Damian decided to show how awesome he was by demanding that Airbnb pay up for the holiday. He emailed Airbnb: "I'm very disappointed no one has contacted me in three days and left us to fend for ourselves. You have a responsibility towards your customers which you have not shown to us. I shall be opening a case on our return and writing to as many consumer champions as I can so that this incident and your lack of any kind of help receives a larger audience." Damian carried out his threat, issuing proceedings in the small claims court as soon as he returned - notwithstanding what he says was Airbnb's initial refusal to give him an address for a summons "due to security". Damian estimated his loss to be a total of £1,464, taking into account the refund of the £514 and including £70 for the court fees. The legal threat worked miraculously well. Damian issued the summons on 17 July, and just four days later Airbnb agreed to pay out his full claim. "We note that in your case, you have been refunded the full value of the reservation, £514.93 We do acknowledge that the level of service provided by Airbnb customer service fell short of our standards and your expectations. In the interests of bringing this matter to a close swiftly, Airbnb is prepared as a gesture of goodwill, and without any admission of liability, to offer you a goodwill payment of £1,464.91, the full value of the claim, including the cost involved in filing this county court claim." How often do you pick up your phone? Samuel Gibbs How many times do you pick up and interact with your phone in a week? More than 500 times? How about the sheer number of notifications you get? It might number in the thousands. With all the talk of smartphone addiction, I was curious to find out just how often I actually use my phone and why, so I took Apple's new Screen Time phonetracking tools for a spin, installing the latest iOS 12 beta. What I discovered is that I pick up my phone every seven minutes during the day - far more than I imagined, and not just at the prompt of a notification. I'll admit to suffering from phantom notifications, the feeling that your phone has just buzzed even through it hasn't. Now I have the data to prove it. While I picked up the phone more than 1,000 times in the week, close to 150 times a day, I actually only received around 700 notifications in a week. That means I pick up and actually interact with my phone, not just look at the time, around 50 times a day without prompting. Obviously some of that is looking things up or proactively sending messages and emails. But the rest I put down to that nervous twitch to check my phone. Screen Time revealed something surprising in the apps I use too. During the week Safari was my go-to app more than anything else, spending almost three hours browsing the web. That was a full hour longer than I spent in Netflix, and twice as long as I spent in Mail, even thought it feels like all I do these days is answer emails with close to 300 notifications a week. Having dumped Twitter in April 2017, and turned everything off on Facebook, social media doesn't figure much in my usage. The messaging app Signal comes in with only an hour's worth of usage, despite getting close to 200 notifications from it - the second most demanding of my attention this week. The number of apps I spent 45 minutes or less with are numerous, and include Reeder, the Google app, Facebook and Pocket, which explains why my "read it later" list just keeps on growing - 45 minutes just isn't enough to get through all those long reads. Curiously I use my phone more frequently on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Why that is, I haven't been able to work out, but the rest of my usage - even at weekends - is consistent with a minimum of three hours spent staring at the little screen a day. It turns out my weekdays are also fairly consistent too, with a burst of 45 minutes spent jabbing at the screen between 8-9am, and another 35 minutes between 5-6pm. I can also see that Facebook is almost exclusively used only on a Saturday, the Amazon app primarily only on a Sunday, and Mail peaks on a Wednesday. All these patterns and more are plain to see when you have the data on hand, which is precisely what Apple's Screen Time and Google's upcoming Dashboard aim to do. While I wouldn't say I'm addicted to my phone (although maybe I'm just in denial), I certainly pick it up more than I thought I would. Perhaps it's time to put the phone down and ignore the vibrations, real or not. Which app do you thing occupy most of your time. Photo: Samuel Gibbs
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