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Let me tell you about a little experience I had recently. To understand it, though, you have to know that this 80-year-old walks six miles a day without fail. That's essentially three miles in the morning before breakfast and three later in the afternoon. And how can I tell that I've walked that far? You already know the answer to that, I'm sure: the pedometer on my cell phone, which I keep in my shirt pocket essentially 18 waking hours a day, tells me, more or less step by step, how far I've gone. But, as it happens, not the other day.
I was rushing around my apartment and had, I suppose, been talking to someone on my iPhone. When I was done, I put it down on my desk. Then I hustled to get myself together for my afternoon walk, grabbed the elevator to the first floor of my apartment building, headed out into the street, and began to walk the usual maze of blocks in my neighborhood, the blocks I've essentially been walking repetitively for years and know like the proverbial back of my hand. I had only gone a relatively few of them when I decided to call a friend (as I so regularly do) and put my little white earphones in my ears. Then I reached for my pocket and, to my shock, it was -- no! -- empty. And -- yes! -- I promptly panicked.
How would I know how far I walked without it? How would the walk be possible? And then, as I turned around to rush home and get it, I panicked over something else: when I got it, it wouldn't be able to record the blocks I had already walked and I would come up short on my six miles on the pedometer (or otherwise have to walk too long and too far). And in truth, I didn't feel faintly at ease again until it was in my pocket and recording my steps.
Now, keep in mind that I've walked that route so many times I don't faintly need my cell phone to tell me when I've more or less gone six miles, but no matter. It's clear -- in a way I hadn't realized until that moment -- that by now my phone is essentially an addiction, that it feels, eerily enough, as crucial to my life as my hand or foot. And then, let me just add that I came home to find that TomDispatchregular Frida Berrigan had just sent me the piece I'm posting today and the timing simply couldn't have been better or, in some sense, more amusing -- or do I mean eerier? It was almost as if she had arranged my little incident so that I would fully appreciate the point she wants to make today about the strange way our cell phones and the technology that goes with them have taken over our lives and our world. How truly eerie! Tom
A World Without iPhones?
Who Can Even Imagine It Any More? Well, Let Me Try
Recently, I've been turning off my iPhone -- all the way off! -- for 10 to 30 minutes at a time. I leave it somewhere in the house, while I try to live IRL ("in real life"), washing dishes, hanging up laundry, or even going for a walk, phoneless.
In this hyper-connected world of ours, doing so, even for such a short time, often feels like an enormous act of self-deprivation -- no podcasts, no long-distance communication with those I'm closest to, no social media, no para-social relationships, no steps of mine being counted, or micro-health-tracking going on. So much, in other words, missing in action. I'm not a digital native. In fact, I am what they call a late adopter. I didn't get a cell phone until the fall of 2003. So I remember when it was normal to go about your business without a powerful computer attached to your person. Even with that perspective -- recalling the not-so-long-agos of answering machines and public phones with grubby buttons and Internet cafes -- I feel unsettled when I'm untethered from my digital leash and experiencing what might pass for freedom, even for a few minutes.
But as unsettling as it is, I also want to start new patterns. Lawyer friends tell me that activists often turn their phones off for the first (and maybe only) time as they commit acts of political property destruction. It's almost a rite of passage for the newly politicized, and it's as incriminating as the massive data trails that other activists might leave.
Did you hear about the Tesla saboteur? Home from college in Boston for spring break, the 19-year-old wanted to express his rage at billionaire Elon Musk's government takeover. He went to a Kansas City Tesla dealership in the middle of the night and used a homemade Molotov cocktail to set a Cybertruck on fire. The fire spread, destroying charging stations and setting a second truck aflame, causing more than $200,000 in damage. He was caught in the act -- at least in data terms. The cameras at Tesla (and inside Tesla vehicles themselves) pinpointed the time of the property destruction, while images of someone who looked like him were caught on multiple cameras in the vicinity.
As for new patterns, turning off my cellphone for a period of time every day means a small window of datalessness that offers a twenty-first-century version of rebellion. It dams up the stream of free data that flows from my device with every tap-tap and swipe. By doing so, I create a tiny space for surprise, for rebellion, for precious secrecy.
I don't have any plans to sabotage a Tesla showroom, nor am I in a current conspiracy with anyone trying to stop a shipment of U.S. weapons to the Israeli Defense Forces for its genocidal campaign against Gaza. I'm not trying to organize a workers' strike at my kids' school or local grocery store. To my shame, I'm not actively planning any of these actions. For those who don't want to make rookie activist data mistakes, the Internet (and here's a nod toward the irony) is full of crash courses on security culture and avoiding self-incrimination or entrapment through careless reliance on tech.
As I power down that ubiquitous device, I remind myself of my own power, too. Yes, I still know how to get places without a map app. I know the answers to the random trivia that comes into my mind any day. (Who sang that song? Who was president in 1954?) Or I can live with the not-knowing. Amazingly enough, I've discovered that I still know how to live in my own mind alone, without being distracted or entertained by a podcast. I've realized that just because I have the urge to reach out to so-and-so, it doesn't actually mean that it has to happen that very second. It's bracing and helpful to remember I can live without this device.
Dehumanizing Technology?
I'm well aware of the research on how bad the online world can be for anyone, especially young people. And believe it or not, my kids -- 11 and 12 -- still don't have cellphones and don't live online. They don't play video games on and off all day long or have access to their own devices at home. But that doesn't mean that they're living some Montessori or Waldorf fantasy of Luddite delight. I kind of wish they were. But that life is for a much higher income bracket than mine. It's worth noting that many in the tech world take great pains to shield their children from this technology. Every other kid on my daughter's bus undoubtedly has a phone and I'm sure she's craning to look over someone's shoulder whenever she can. My son's friends all have phones -- no surprise in this world of ours -- and play video games regularly. He's a little left out of the chatter about this or that gaming platform, but I'm not giving in just so he can fit into a culture that I don't think is all that healthy to begin with.
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