Phonelessness

Welcome to the present.

Present-ish.

The recent past and how it affects irl rn.

Anyway, this is a brief break in the story arc, a chance to reframe the context of the remaining tales to tell and to reflect on yet another aspect of the role of modern technology in our lives.

I broke my stupid phone.

Running for a train I tripped and, phone-in-pocket, landed face first. In the 6 years I’ve had a smartphone this is the first time I’ve ever cracked a screen. Normally a fastidious protector of my wares, I guess I banked all of my minor breaks and cashed them in all at once for a total breakdown. The screen had a combination of the classic destroyed screen “inkblot” (which is peculiar because screens stopped being LCD a while ago), geometric glitches resembling both a Scottish tartan and also the keys of a piano, as well as occasional rogue pixels shining brightly in full R, G, or B.

The phone was surprisingly usable for like a minute, but it steadily and rapidly lost functionality. The best, and most comical, example was of trying to text with my lender. At the time I was under contract on a house (didn’t buy, story for another time) and trying to hammer out the details with all parties involved. During this critical negotiation, in a darkly humorous twist, I was suddenly unable to communicate effectively. I say effectively because communication was still happening, but it was a bizarre incomprehensible dialogue between the angry spirit of my dying phone and a befuddled mortgage broker. Have you ever had your computer remotely controlled? It was like that, but if the person remoting in were actually AI and suddenly it forgot how to speak human. I literally took my hands off the phone and just watched with amused terror as it independently concocted total nonsense and sent it off to this critical player in the largest financial transaction I’ve ever contemplated.

As luck would have it, I just so happened to have requested a replacement phone a couple weeks prior to the screen smashing. The lightning port was damaged and not charging the phone consistently or fully, I have insurance, and a new one was on its way. Thankfully, I only had to suffer phonelessness for a day or so. But those several dozen hours proved to be a challenge as any one of you who’s experienced a similar lapse in connectivity will know. I was able to find workarounds for all of the things I truly needed— train schedules from a desktop, calls made from landlines or borrowed cells, personal emails done at work on lunch breaks, etc. One thing to note, something I’ve been intentional about over the years, is having a few key phone numbers memorized: employer, family, and a handful of close friends. It has proven very useful on more than one occasion, occasions just like these; well worth the very minimal effort required to commit it to memory. Honestly, it’s a vestige of the landline days. I still remember the phone numbers of all my childhood friends, my parents’ forever numbers (established with their first cell phones), and, of course, the landline from my childhood home. Sometimes I’m tempted to call the old landline numbers, just to see what happens. Likely recycled. I mean, aside from businesses, who has a landline anymore? Eventually, no one will even know their own number, nor need to. You can already see it happening. On more than one occasion when exchanging contact info I’ve had the other person have to send me a text from their phone in order to get their number. They just didn’t know it. Of course, this solution requires at least one party to know their own number. What happens when two of these digit ignorant people try to exchange contact info? They probably just find each other on Instagram.

My own relationship to modern technology has been mixed, I can get swept up in the amazement of it, feel awe for its seemingly magical abilities, and also be profoundly worried about its impacts. I was really reluctant to get a smartphone, I waited almost ten years. I had a flip phone well into the laughable stage of early anachronism. I even briefly returned to a landline in 2010 for a year. Getting robot-narrated text messages on my answering machine was especially weird. The part that I really didn’t like (still don’t) about cell phones was the non-consensual, unintentional shift in the social contract. There was a time when it was legitimate to be unreachable, unavailable, in transit, on your way, out of the house, out of the office, on vacation, and away from your phone.

No longer.

You must have your phone with you, it must be turned on, and you must answer. If you don’t, then you have a small window in which to send a message explaining why you’re unavailable. From the moment someone reaches out to you a countdown begins, this dynamic is as old as distance communication itself, but the time frame has shortened drastically. I have no empirical data, but I’d venture to say that in the pre-internet landline days, and with the exception of certain professions, you could receive a phone call and with zero communication (including communicating about communicating) safely wait 4, maybe 5 days, before someone thought you were rude or got worried. Imagine doing that now in the 20’s. Think of the anxiety, the righteous indignation, the outrage. When what was once exceptional becomes expected —a new normal— to rebuke it, to remove it, is to elicit some sense of suffering. Who is actually responsible for that suffering is up for debate. The updated social contract, which we unthinkingly stumbled into, puts the responsibility for this suffering squarely on the shoulders of the unreached one. It’s reasonable to expect a response within X timeframe (hours, not days), the logic being that because you can be available you should be available. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. However, a more spiritual approach (think eastern religions, or 12-step programs) would suggest that the suffering experienced is the result of an imbalance in expectations, and that the one experiencing the suffering is really suffering from an attachment to their own expectations.

Furthermore, this social contract is heavily weighted in favor of those doing the reaching. This formula presupposes that the need of others to reach you is greater than your need to be unreachable. There is a much higher threshold for overreaching than for underavailability. Think about it. People who overreach, at most are thought of as annoying, while people who go off the radar are irresponsible, derelict, maybe even dangerous, or in need of intervention. You can probably guess which end of the spectrum I fall on. Sometimes I just don’t want to be reached. Sometimes I need a lot of privacy and personal space and I don’t want it impeded by anyone for any reason. The days of socially acceptable chronic unreachability worked really well for people wired like me, we had a cover of legitimacy for our weekly or daily retreats. Undoubtedly, the type of people that wanted/needed frequent contact, interaction, stimulation and assurance were driven crazy by this setup. The constant contact of the digital brought them everyone, everywhere, all the time, and if it didn’t… they could get upset about it. Now their needs had primacy and the cover of legitimacy. And now the onus is on those with higher solitude needs to advocate clearly and firmly for our hermetic leanings. No more taking the phone off the hook, or just pretending you weren’t there. Nope, now we have to own it. Which, in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, it just means navigating a higher frequency of uncomfortable situations than we used to.

This all makes me think of when the pandemic first hit, I remember hearing a new refrain that this was the introvert’s holiday. The quiet indoor crowd let out a collective quiet indoor sigh of relief: Finally! The perfect catch-all excuse to never go anywhere or do anything they didn’t want to without ever offending anyone or feeling guilty. While all the extroverts were pawing at the windows, tears in their eyes, missing their friends (lol, remember having friends?). Virtually overnight everything flipped and the introverts came out on top. Suddenly their position, their preferences were the legitimate ones. What a weird, weird time this has been.

But back to phonelessness and its deleterious effects.

Okay, so I had a taste of the dysfunction that goes hand-in-hand with technological hypercentralization (i.e. your phone is your phone, camera, calendar, dictionary, encyclopedia, flashlight, email, internet, GPS, music player, TV, gaming system, payment method, house keys, car keys, and so on). And, again, I got lucky and it was only 24ish hours. I was prudent to have insurance. But not prudent enough to be backing shit up. Like my contacts, like my photos and videos, like my notes program. Wait, who gives a shit about the iPhone’s Notes app? I didn’t, but I should have because I was using it to methodically and thoroughly track my trip across the country. Day by day, hour by hour, tracking notable activities, actions, people, mileage, costs, etc. Everything up to Day 14 was written with these daily notes and corresponding daily photos as the reference points. My memory serves me well, but it’s no match for hard data. All I have now are the memories (and the trip photos, which thankfully I did have the foresight to backup).

So, this is all to say that there are still stories to tell, buuuuuttttttt they might blur together. There will be stuff I miss, timelines I’ll get wrong, people I might transpose from one setting to another. I don’t think it will make a significant difference, in fact, I’m sure if I hadn’t said anything you would never have noticed. But it still felt worth mentioning, because I value accuracy and precision, and because “winging it” is going to feel weird and a little wrong to me. Oh well, you do the best you can.

And next time remember to back up your shit. ALL your shit. Matthew.

*Just wait until Neuralink creates thoughtspeak, as in bonafide instantaneous telepathic communication between its users. Hey assholes, how are you going to feel about that, huh? That’s going to do some pretty fucking bizarre things to social norms.