“I am wasteful too much time on the phone and was intrigued by the idea of simplifying my digital life. So I found some apps and tutorials designed to make my smartphone ‘dumb’, but I was hesitant to join. Am I just trying to escape modern life? ”
—Stupid thing
Dear Dumbstruck,
As more and more formerly muted objects in our lives (refrigerators, thermostats, doorbells, even toilets) are named “smart”, we often feel like the entire inanimate world is going through a process of enlightenment. And “intelligent” is an irresistible adjective, especially in a society that treats intelligence as a form of currency — or even, at times, as a sacred virtue. So while “dumbfounded“One person’s phone looks like it depicts a fairly simple process of deleting apps, blocking internet access, and choosing aesthetically unappealing features (gray scale, bland wallpapers), I understand the frustration. anxiety it can cause. It’s hard to avoid the feeling that such digital minimalism is swimming upstream of this awakening, that you’re not only simplifying your life but depleting your mind.
Perhaps that is why one of the most popular new generation dumb phones, the Light Phone, chose the language of brightness and its association with intellectual brilliance. The initial model, potentially limited to making and receiving calls, was described in the company’s 2015 Kickstarter as “thoughtfully simple” and promised a life in which users able to engage more fully in mental and artistic tasks, higher mind goals, without the subsequent buzzing and beeping dopamine cravings. But the story of the Light Phone also illustrates the backsliding familiar to anyone trying to cut back on digital — the way that features, almost, come back into the picture on their own. By the time the second model was released, in 2019, the phone had added a touchscreen (black and white) and text messaging, along with music, mapping, and ride-sharing apps. . The promotional materials emphasize that these supplements are “tools not feeds,” a rather dubious circumstantial justification by a dieter when emphasizing that their zest includes include “good fats”.
Even the most fervent attempts to abandon pervasive technologies turn into rationalizations and invent innovative holes. I happen to know a woman who is so savvy with news that she deleted all the apps and multimedia browsers from her phone, turning it down to the background of texts, calls, weather and maps — a solution that worked until she discovered it. can locate the New York Times Company headquarters in Manhattan on Google Maps and access the newspaper’s homepage through the app’s internal browser. Ancient people have seen about
Addictions — they couldn’t be smarter — apply doubly to intelligent technologies, designed to compulsively use and evade your most ingenious efforts to achieve mastery. they.
With that in mind, I can suggest a more counter-intuitive solution: Stop fighting the fear of dumbness and embrace it instead. Like most people who want to “be dumb,” I suppose you’re attracted in part by the term’s association with silence — the desire to cut back on chatter — but are stymied by some Its not-so-nice synonym, like goofy. But stupidity is not always weighted by the negative associations it carries. This word comes from the Greek Idioms, referring to the Athenians as essentially laypeople — people who, unlike soldiers, scribes and politicians, had little connection to state affairs. It means “alone” or “private” (meanings exist in words like featured) and is reserved for those who enjoy freedom and autonomy from public life, the kind of existence that often serves as a haven for independent thought. Gilles Deleuze argues that stupidity is closely related to philosophy, starting with Socrates, who famously admitted that he “knows nothing” and claimed this made him wiser than those who believed him. smart. Descartes, in order to sow the seeds of modern thought on a new terrain, similarly had the will to destroy all knowledge that he had long taken for granted.
Few of those positive connotations survive to this day, but the nostalgia for the dumbfounded technologies on the rise is often fueled by a not-quite-modern desire to separate oneself from the bustle of the world. polis and agora’s frenzied commerce. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that, despite the widely praised intelligence, many of us secretly wish to know less. The view that information on a certain scale becomes something less informative than truth is colorfully voiced by Thoreau, whose complaints about the 19th-century news cycle are voiced. today’s readers are surprisingly familiar. When he heard that a transatlantic cable would soon bring updates from Europe, Thoreau imagined “the first news that would reach the broad, comforting ears of Americans would be that Princess Adelaide was ill. whooping cough”. The suspicion that that “knowledge” was thickening him partly motivated him to abandon the city for Walden. And I sense in your question, Dumbstruck, something similar that the information economy obscures, somewhere — perhaps in the fine print of its massive user agreements? — A bland existential bargain: that instant access to knowledge subtly dulls your imagination; that immersing you in digital echo chambers can create more original thought patterns.
Stupidity should not be confused with stupidity, the willful denial of information can break one’s rigid beliefs. The latter is rooted in pride making it the inverse of intelligence, not its substitute. Idiocy can be seen as a condition of openness and flexibility, stupid archetypal defining qualities that appear in many cultures, from Sioux heyokaa sacred clown deliberately performing counterintuitive actions (riding back, dressing inside out, complaining about being full when food is scarce) to challenge popular assumptions, towards Russian. yurodivy, or holy fool, a seemingly frenzied character said to have given him divine insight. Fools tend to be shape-shifters who thrive on thresholds and boundaries. This is especially true of the Shakespeare fool, who often “balances reality and the various structures of reality,” as one scholar puts it. The fool has orchestrated the space between the play and the audience — the space where the virtual meets the real — moving flexibly between the stage and the crowd and occasionally breaking through the fourth wall to comment on the play’s theme.
I mention the fool in part to emphasize the virtue of being “dumb” rather than opting out. As tempting as it may be to live completely off the grid or leave civilization, it’s practically impossible to simulate Thoreau’s retreat to Walden (the more impossible the better). for Thoreau himself). Chances are the compact smartphone offers a distinct advantage: Even the weakest smartphones can be restored to their full capabilities at any time, which This puts the user in the nominal space of fools, a no-man’s land that can provide perspective, or even wisdom. Your unwillingness to “dive in,” as you say, seems less a sign of anxiety than proof that you crave unique possibilities that exist somewhere between online and offline. , between virtual and real. In the best case, the shortened smartphone does not provide an escape from reality or a denial of its conditions, but rather a gateway to new opportunities to define one’s relationship with shared life — while still being able to call an Uber.
To be honest,
Cloud
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This article appeared in the September 2022 issue. Follow now.
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