Screening out consciousness

Granting the premise that the phone is an antidote to living, though, I was wondering: what is it I personally don't want to live through? If I paid attention, at precisely the moments my attention tried to veer away, what would I find I was doing and feeling and thinking? What about existence makes me reach for my pocket?

Sorry, that was a tangent. The point is, people have been dividing their attention between their immediate surroundings and more interesting things somewhere else for a long time. In 1989, though, you wouldn't switch away from your phone call with a friend to dial the weather and then the time and then the library reference desk. The intention with... See more

A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive . This is what all its functions and features ultimately achieve: cameras deliver you from time, GPS abstracts you out of space, and an all-consuming screen that keeps you a constant safe distance from yourself. If there’s something you’re worried or upset about, you can simply hid

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Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive . This is what all its functions and features ultimately achieve: cameras delive

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Now the suds, edged with the orange-red of the meat sauce from the leftover pasta that had been in the lunches, were ebbing away. I was looking at them because I wasn't looking at my phone.

At the end of the weekend I picked up the phone to check the statistics on how much I'd picked up my phone. The screen-time figures said I'd had 35 minutes on Sunday. On Saturday, I'd had 41 minutes. But on Wednesday, in the grip of unexamined phone dependency, I'd only had 77, and that was the worst day of the workweek—save Monday, when I'd racked... See more