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To hold infinity in the palm of your hand
April 02, 2011
Alice Gregory writes:
Shteyngart says the first thing that happened when he bought an iPhone “was that New York fell away . . . It disappeared. Poof.” That’s the first thing I noticed too: the city disappeared, along with any will to experience. New York, so densely populated and supposedly sleepless, must be the most efficient place to hone observational powers. But those powers are now dulled in me. I find myself preferring the blogs of remote strangers to my own observations of present ones. Gone are the tacit alliances with fellow subway riders, the brief evolution of sympathy with pedestrians. That predictable progress of unspoken affinity is now interrupted by an impulse to either refresh a page or to take a website-worthy photo. I have the nervous hand-tics of a junkie. For someone whose interest in other people’s private lives was once endless, I sure do ignore them a lot now.
Via Doc Searls and, with rueful irony, William Blake.
Comments
Yesterday I started reading Super Sad True Love Story and also read about Creepy. Both excellent, but not to be taken at the same time.
Posted by: tomslee ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.roughtype.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 2, 2011 12:08 PM
This is exactly the reason why I've been struggling against the recurrent impulse of buying a smartphone. My phone is 6 years old and I accumulated enough credits with my telco in France to get a smartphone with a huge discount. But I'm aware this comes with the addiction to snippets of worthless facebook posts and other time-killing apps. The question is : how long will I be able to turn down the marketing promise of the Iphone brave new world ? Its screen is so slick that I sometimes dream of it.
Posted by: zapata31 at April 6, 2011 10:24 AM
The iPhone does have some useful restrictions available though.
If you enable restrictions and ask a trusted partner/friend/parent to set the passcode, you can disable Safari, YouTube, and installation of apps.
Thus, you can install the actually useful apps initially, then have the phone locked down to your specification - no temptation and no distractions.
Another useful method is to use a network provider with no 3G data packet selected, if you are outside the US and have an unlocked iPhone. Then you wont be pestered so much outside of home or office, and is also cheaper.
Posted by: Robert Graham at April 11, 2011 11:00 AM
I'm amazed that people still think that smart phones will ruin there lifes. Why is it so difficult to see the pattern that every new technology has been treated the same way by people afraid of change and they have been wrong every time.
This behaviour that Alice describes do exist but it is an initial state. The reason for that is obvious, we don't like it. What we do like is a little of both since that enrich our life's. Try to let go of the either/or thinking.
Posted by: Magnus_engdahl at April 12, 2011 03:42 AM
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