[fredski42]

I remember a sci-fi short story from a long time ago where everything that defined you as a person was digitized and available in your smartphone. The story was about a person loosing his smartphone and coming into all kinds of admin horror to regain his identity but eventually ended up broke sleeping under the bridge..

[int_19h]

It's probably not that, but there's a sci-fi novel "The Age of the Pussyfoot" by Frederik Pohl, in which one of the key technologies is a device that everybody carries on their belt that is described thus:

> The remote-access computer transponder called the "joymaker" is your most valuable single possession in your new life. If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.

The protagonist eventually finds out from personal experience that people who do not have those things (e.g. because they can't afford them) are basically social outcasts, not the least because they can't hold most jobs, or even look for one. But even beyond that, not having the device means that you aren't being tracked means that you can e.g. be murdered without much of a consequence. And so people who can't afford the real thing still shell out money for a mockup of a joymaker to carry on the belt, just so they aren't obvious targets.

The most interesting thing about that novel is that it was published in 1969, long before cellphones or "the cloud" were a thing. A rare case of a sci-fi author taking a contemporary hot bleeding edge tech (remote time-sharing terminals for mainframes) and correctly extrapolating it into the future. Pohl even gave a broadly correct timeframe when he talked about the novel:

> I do not really think it will be that long. Not five centuries. Perhaps not even five decades.

[dmwilcox]

I feel like this was my last week. Welcome to the UK as an American tech worker. You use a custom Android ROM, too bad, you can't setup your visa. Want to book something on Ryan Air too bad, "computer says no" (really I should never do this again for many reasons).

The level of expectation that your phone is a set of handcuffs that you do not own is high. If you own your device and not vice versa, things just don't work in this world. And honestly why would I want a computer that I didn't control anyway?

[rsync]

I sympathize but a much, much simpler way to negotiate all of this is a dedicated phone for "official" ID activities.

In some ways it is the opposite of a "burner" phone - sort of a quarantined device that only interacts with your real, official, legal identity.

[notpushkin]

Oh yeah, that really sucks. I’ve had a bunch of apps deem my non-rooted, bootloader relocked phone too insecure for them to operate. Nothing critical for me, fortunately (though I do miss Google Pay).

[jorgesborges]

This is how I feel leaving the house without my phone.

[shrx]

Related: Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a great novel on this topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_My_Tears,_the_Policeman_S...

[oniony]

Sounds like a marginally more modern Brazil.

[namaria]

You don't end up under a bridge in Brazil for losing your phone.

You end up there by being born in the wrong family or part of town.

[oniony]

I meant the movie.