Age of Distractions

Recently, my smartphone conked out. So, while the new one was ordered but not yet delivered, I went back to an old Nokia feature phone. Boy, does it feel weird! A phone only meant for calling? No apps? No Internet? However did we live like this before the iPhone was launched? I remembered Thomas Ricker’s article:
“We're no longer in the age of flip phones and candy bars that shipped with dedicated start and end call buttons. Their raison d'être was voice calling.”

Sure, as Scott Adams says, smartphones have rewired us to a point where we always have a cloud hanging over us, the “mental distraction of simply knowing you might have a message if only you looked”. Not just from good old SMS’s, but Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Email. And yet, without the smartphone, I feel like I’ve gone “full-caveman”, as Adams put it.

Of course, you could argue that Distraction is a multi-billion dollar industry:
“Our largest and most important tech companies are literally in the business of distracting you with their advertisements and their apps. They design their products to maximize distraction, not efficiency, because your distraction is their profit.”
Having said that, Adams acknowledges:
“Don’t get me wrong. I think Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and the other tech giants are huge assets to humankind. (Okay, not the last three.)”
There! You heard the man: the smartphone is a huge asset to mankind. I got to go now: I am having smartphone withdrawal symptoms…

Comments

  1. KumarAugust 28, 2015 at 3:46 PM

    We all have been had!

    We all will continue to be had! Amen!!

    We all get gobbled up continuously, so that we won't get extinct! Great.
    Boy, what a contradiction! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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