Not an especially deep thought about the phones, but I had it so now you do too.
I was listening to John Gruber’s podcast, The Talk Show, on my walk this morning. He and his guest, Louie Mantia, were deep into a technical chat about the early days of iOS, but in that way thoughts can sometimes jag sideways, I found myself wondering why didn’t desktop internet fuck us up the way mobile internet has?
We had the web for a long time before we had smartphones, and there was some pretty kooky stuff going on even back then. But the world wasn’t broken in the same way it got later, and we weren’t as broken as we are now. I think the reason might be very simple: you can stand up and walk away from a computer. In fact you have to occasionlly, if only to take a toilet break. But you can’t really walk away from your phone unless you deliberately leave it behind.
It’s always there, isn’t it? On the bedside table while you sleep, in your pocket when you leave the house. It’s part of us now. And of course, once the tech companies realised this, they began to exploit it.
Do you remember the early days of mobile Facebook? It was a fucking joke. I recall posting somewhere, probably on Twitter, about how terrible it was and oh how we larfed. For what felt like an eternity in tech time—maybe six or twelve months—people were sorta questioning if this was the end of Facebook. Everyone was going mobile, and their mobile offering was hot garbage. Well, the Zuck showed us, didn’t he?
You often hear people lament, “It’s the phones.” What they really mean, of course, is the algorithmic exploitation of human frailty, organically located in the dopamine cycle. But the phones are the perfect delivery device for it. They made it so much easier to hook us than a desktop computer ever could.
Wait until you have a personal AI companion run by dystopian tech bros whispering in your ear every minute of every day. That's their plan.
I went back to FB because family and friends are still on there and its easy. Plus they let you post your photos the way you want, unlike their photo app IG, which apparently was a photo oriented app but is now just a mess of ads and video failing at trying to compete with tiktok or whatever. But i refuse to put the FB app on my phone. Desktop only. All notifications turned off. I should do the same for IG. Desktop only (the phone version always compresses my uploads terribly anyway), turn off notifications and start carrying a physical book with me when i find myself in those quiet moments like lunch at the desk in the office, or waiting in line or on a bus or something. My kids and nieces/nephews are completely enslaved. They didn't know a before time so can't quite grasp the idea of freedom of thought to let the mind wander where ever. Glad my hobby is photography and i'm able bodied enough to tramp around places that have no reception. It's weird spending time in your own head for great chunks of time, but i suspect healthy as long as i eat my greens and stay off social media.