TECH TALK: SMART PHONES, AND SOCIAL MEDIA

If you've read my blog posts for awhile, you know I have a love-hate relationship with internet technology and the tools we use for it. I will repeat what I often say; I am not critical of people who use Facebook, Instagram, etc.; you all get something from those platforms, and that's good.

A couple of op-eds caught my interest recently, so there is a reading assignment in this post.

1.  Steve Jobs Never Wanted us to Use Our iPhones Like This, by Cal Newport in the NY Times is about those pocket computers we all carry around. Mr. Newport discusses what he calls the "constant companion model" that the vast majority of us have in our relationship to our smart phones. He writes about the talk Steve Jobs gave in 2007 when he introduced the very first iPhone, what Jobs referred to as a better iPod that made phone calls. 

Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already found important and make them better.

But the smart phone now is something completely different; it dictates in many ways the rhythms of our daily lives. It is no longer merely a tool we use for specific actions, but a machine that is constantly in our hands, constantly calling to us to look at it and touch it. In many ways, our lives are not ours, but are steered by the big tech companies who give us the "free" apps we so love. Instead of improving activities that we found important before this technology existed, this model changes what we pay attention to in the first place — often in ways designed to benefit the stock price of attention-economy conglomerates, not our satisfaction and well-being.

This is not about the privacy issues I so often write (complain) about; it is about the quality of our lives, and begs the question: are we doing the things we enjoy and really want to do, in the moment?

I am now trying an experiment. I left Facebook long ago, and never joined Instagram, but I have a habit of taking the device out of my pocket often to look up something that comes up in a discussion, or that I'm thinking about. And probably more often, when I'm just sitting around, I open the device and look at the headlines on various feeds. In other words, I waste a lot of time doing things that the device allows me to do, but are not necessarily what I really want to be spending my time doing. 

So, I am now trying to train myself to set certain times when I will open my laptop and go through email, look at items I want to research, peruse the news. To facilitate this, I've started carrying a small note pad (paper!) and pencil (an info entry device used with paper) so I can jot a note, keep a list, of things I want to do on the computer. 

I still have the pocket computer in my pocket, but my goal is to leave it there more of the time. 

I encourage all of you, dear readers, to read Cal Newport's piece in the Times.

2. He Reported on Facebook. Now He Approaches It With Caution, a Q&A with reporter Nick Confesorre, in the NY Times.  Mr. Confessore admits that, despite his best efforts, there is not a lot he can really do to protect his own privacy. Most of the ecosystem of mobile phones and apps, as well as the advertising technology that permeates the mobile and desktop web, is designed to extract a large amount of your personal information. The whole thing is effectively unregulated and almost impossible to escape without a fair amount of planning and technical expertise. 

He has not left Facebook, but uses it very cautiously after setting as many of the privacy settings as he can find. It's interesting to read his approach to using social media, and his comments about Facebook, Google and Twitter ("which is a hell of random angry people"). As for privacy, we are on our own, because the "commercial-surveillance-industrial-complex" is very poorly regulated in the United States. 

I've often wondered something about the mainstream social media that so many people use but don't trust, and that is, why continue using them? I don't mean everyone should quit cold-turkey. What I mean is, what would happen if opinion leaders and influencers announced that they were moving their social networking experience to platform XYZ that does not harvest consumer data and sell it, does not track users, does not track users' locations. These platforms exist. And the reality is that many of us who use them, especially as part of our career, could afford to even pay a reasonable subscription fee (think Netflix, Amazon Prime, and that daily latte at the coffee shop). This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram will not live forever, they will be replaced. 

And so, more interesting things to read and think about, but not right this moment, on your smart phone, instead of doing something you really want to be doing! 

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