Musings

May 10, 2024 (writ May 7)

This website is only one part of my journey to reclaim a conscious relationship to technology. This week my screentime on an iphone averaged 4 hours a day, and when I'm depressed, I can be on my phone for 10 hours a day. What do I do on a phone for 10 hours? Mostly share memes and watch video essays. It is not a fulfilling life. Throughout the last year I've tried different methods to minimize the amount of freetime I spent on my phone. I put the phone in grayscale mode, I kept the brightness turned down, I set app timers on Instagram and YouTube, I changed where those apps were on my homescreen. But my relationship to the smartphone never changed. I would always find a reason to go back to color mode, like to see a friend's art or to facetime. I can snooze the app timers for hours and moving the apps only meant there was a new thumb pattern to get to the app. All attempts at deletion or uninstallation were unsuccessful.

So I went looking for a new device. When I talk to people about ditching a smartphone for another device, they often say "So you want a flip-phone?" and no, that would not suit my needs. I need a full qwerty keyboard and a GPS. The sucsessor to the Blackberry is the Unihertz Titan. It runs Android 11 and is a bit too smart for me. I don't want a full-functioning computer in my pocket.

As I was watching content on the dumbphone digital detox, I saw reviews for the Light Phone. The most appealing thing about this device was the e-ink display similar to an e-reader. No LCD screen, no web browser. Instead of apps, the lightphone has its own "tools". Calander, alarms, other things; I'm not writing a review right now. But it met my critera for using a qwerty keyboard, and it was recently updated to include a "directions" tool.

So I put my SIM card into the phone and I was ready to take it out. 5 minutes into my walk to the train station I saw someone's trash brimming out of the can on the curb. On the ground were parts of a plastic skeleton; I saw a leg and a skull. My hands immedately reached for my phone to take a photo, but the Light Phone doesn't have a camera, and I didn't have a camera on my person. For a moment I'm disappointed that I can't take a photo to share immedately with my freinds. But then I remeber that digital photos ephemeral, and plastic skulls in the gutter are not. So I picked up the skull and dropped it in my totebag, eager to share the memento mori with my next guest.

With the light phone, I am choosing to engage with single-use devices, as in devices designed to serve one function. If I wanted to take photos, I'd carry a camera. If I wanted to record audio, I'd carry a field recorder. If I wanted to play games, I'd carry an emulator device. Why carry a totebag or carry a journal and three devices in my jacket? I feel grounded engaging with tactile objects with buttons and inputs. It let's me indulge my senses, decide that it is valuable to deeply listen, and that these moments are worth capturing to transmute to art. Connecting with the world this way gives my sensetivities purpose, even power. Having an iPhone made me a nervous wreck because it's a safe box to hide in while I'm in public. The choice to ditch the smartphone and social media is making me lean into the experience that is existence.