Rejecting Smartphones

Fast Company does a good job here.  Most of my regular reader know that I am worried about our future connected to technology.  I know there is no stopping this train.  Whether we end up in utopia, 1984 or The Matrix, this is coming.  Change. Fast-Company-Magazine-April-2014 Massive disruption.  And the change is not going to be limited to how you buy things, but internally.  I am convinced that years from now, perhaps over a century or so, sociologists and psychiatrists will release findings that disucss the massive change that happened to us as a species around the time of the coming of mobile computing.

 

So, give this article a read.  Some good excerpts are here:

 

rejecting smartphone culture was a deliberate and serious decision: “We’re taking a stance and even though we know it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference to the world, it makes a difference in our lives,” Jennie says. But they’re not alone. Smartphone backlash has recently begun to surface–comedian Louis C.K. and director James Cameron have both spoken up about why they think smartphones are bad for society. James and Jennie have more kindred spirits than they think.

 

Peering into my iPhone’s tiny screen, I somewhat self-consciously ask the Sheehans what it is about smartphones that offends them so. “Smartphones have become an extension of people’s bodies,” James explains. “People are no longer participating in the world around them; it is that bodily disconnect from their surroundings that we are so vehement about.” From what he can tell, most New Yorkers are completely glued to their phones on buses, at restaurants, walking down the street, in their cars.

They are concerned that people are no longer in control of their technology but, instead, these devices shape the way that people live, spend their time, and decide what they like. Jennie supports this view. “You feel like you have choices from your apps, but you’re really being programmed for those choices,”

[having just gotten a smartphone] Marguerite is acutely aware of how her behavior is changing. For instance, it is getting easier to avoid making eye contact with strangers on the train or asking for directions when she is lost. “There is a certain amount of psychological anxiety involved with any social interaction and we can avoid that feeling by retreating into our device,” she says. There is some evidence to suggest that smartphone users are so distracted they are unlikely to notice when those around them are in distress and when they do, their first impulse might be to film the event than to help.