Every once in a while I do an exercise. I draw up on a piece of paper a sketch of my phone. For each of the apps I use, I write the purpose of the app and try to come up with an alternative way of achieving the same ends. Since I was young, I have always been fascinated by compartmentalization. What I find most interesting about modern smart phones is the way they have created second-tier levels of compartmentalization that have consolidated an multifaceted array of functions into a single device. Whereas one might used to have carried an camera, music player, video recorder, phone, calculator, etc. all bulky antiquated uni-taskers by contemporary standards. That all of these tasks can be accomplished by a single device is mind boggling but the emergence of applications has done far more for expanding the reach of a handheld cellular device than simplifying the number of gadgets we carry around with us.
When written out, I realize I am far more dependent on my iPhone now for its applications than I may have been a just a few years ago before I got a smartphone. Basic functions like calculator functions and a top-rate camera even internet access are now expected features in a cellphone though I can recall a time in middle school when teachers would tell us that skills like mental math and the memorization of state capitals was an important pedagogical exercise because calculators and encyclopedias would not always be available to us at a moment’s notice—and that was only a few years ago.
There is the recurring argument that the more reliant we become on technology the stupider we become in real life. To the extent that I can outsource my mental faculties and memorization capacity to Google, I have less need to store such banalities as state capitals in my mind, freeing up headspace for different subject matter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/is-google-making-students-stupid/380944/
The next level of app involved capitalizing on innate human insecurity through the technological plane. As a luddite, I long for the day that civilization returns the pen, paper, and the printing press and I am an aggressive advocate for face-to-face interaction and frequent conversation however, I do not agree with the idea that technology is unique in making us feel more alone. Rather, technology because of how close it has integrated with our everyday existence, is simply magnifying and advantageously marketing what capitalist markets have always historically targeted which moody philosophers would argue for and iterate over and over which is that we all have insecurity and we all have desire. Insofar as desire can be continuously generated and insecurity is encouraged and allowed to fester products can be sold. This has been the logic of advertising for decades, but the ubiquity of social media has created new extremes emphasizing Lacanian jouissance—essentially participating in the creation of our online lives as commercials of ourselves.
Every time I do this exercise I decide to delete all my “toxic” social media for between one and three days after which point I usually re-download the applications over the course of a few days.
Because between the absolutely rudimentary and the absurdly superfluous lie harmless applications like Lyft, and Google Maps, and WeatherPup without which I would functionally incapable of getting around cities, incapable of getting around campus, and unable to dress properly for the weather at which point I decide, well I have this magical device that I can’t get rid of and so I sign back into Facebook and scroll through my feed once again. Though this is obviously far from perfect system for maintaining technological sanity, I find that each time I go back to social media, I am able to refine my taste so that I only follow and invest my time in what is actually important to me on social media: tagging my friends in dog memes.
Relevant sources:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dogspotting/
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