The Creepiness of Phone-Centric Culture
Dumbing down my phone has led to some interesting observations: mainly, that once you’re no longer nose-deep in your phone, you begin to see that everyone, EVERYWHERE is still caught up in the little black mirror. In the waiting room at the doctor’s office, in the grocery store, in their car — everyone’s looking down at their phones. It reminds me a lot of the Doctor Who episode “Rise Of The Cybermen” particularly the scene where The Doctor and Rose are surrounded by people simultaneously getting a download of information to their brains.
That episode aired in 2006, and we’re no better nearly 20 years later. In fact, it’s gotten worse with the rise of smartphones (starting with the iPhone almost a year after “Rise Of The Cybermen” aired). Our entire lives are wrapped up in this pocket-sized computer, and not necessarily for the better.
I came across a great quote from playwright and novelist Max Frisch today, which exemplifies the problem:
Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to
experience it.
It is exceedingly rare to be “in the moment” these days. We avoid our worlds both external and internal by looking at our phones. It’s only going to get worse with the rise of AI, which now allows us to bypass the wonderful, yet arduous task of learning an artistic skill and even the birth pains of creation itself. Athena, already sprung from Zeus’ head, minus the headache.
All of this to say: it’s exceedingly creepy to be the only person in a waiting room who isn’t looking at their phone. It is creepy to have teenagers pass you in a narrow aisle at the craft store without looking up from their phones nor interacting with each other. It is creepy to see everyone around you refuse to experience the world around them.
What are we afraid of experiencing? Are we so scared of our internal worlds that we’d rather mollify our conscious mind than experience even an ounce of boredom, lest the monsters come out to play? Or is the external world so dystopian that we cannot function in it without numbing our brains?
I’m not sure I have answers to any of those questions, but perhaps without my phone glued to my hand I can start to deal with them head-on.
