Ian was writing four years ago about the cigarette of this century.
The point is not whether technologies like smartphones actually make us more or less connected to one another–that’s a cheap, pat question whose answer is best left to trade books and TED talks. The point is that technologies like the Blackberry change our social fabric in ways that we often cannot see, and therefore cannot fully reason about. McLuhan argued that technologies can never be fully grasped in the present, but only after we establish some distance from them.
I am doing that as much as I can. It annoys me because it’s easy to not have your phone around you to look at and yet, I struggle. Which is weak. There’s always something to look at right? No. That’s what completely scares me: we often look at our phones for no reason, pulling to refresh some content we already saw etc. We’re completely in the slot machine psychology here.
Recently I forced myself to have dinner without looking at my phone, without having it with me in the kitchen. It’s weird but it’s fantastic I actually enjoy my food far more. I feel much more satisfied.
Someone might say that reading books does the same disservice to your neck except that we don’t read books and never did for hours everyday like we do with phones. The convenience is right here, one minute that becomes five minutes at a time.
Like smoking, I’m not against it but let’s have some self control/respect.