“Diving deeper into the dark hallucination of my digital life…”

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For years I had been diving deeper into the dark hallucination of my digital life, feeling my trust eroded, in the news, the truth, the very evidence before my eyes. It was invigorating, suddenly, to take hold of something real. There is nothing more real than rock. Not when you trust your weight to it, maybe your life.

I’m hardly the first person to flee the shallows of modern life by running for the hills. “I am losing the precious days,” said John Muir, the pioneering American environmentalist and mountaineer, in 1883. “I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”

I found this brief read to be both intriguing and disheartening. It’s sobering to realize how easily we risk becoming enslaved by the very devices we’ve created—like sheep who have fashioned their own shepherds.(1) It’s thought-provoking to imagine life without a smartphone, and to ask whether, in the modern world, such a thing is even possible. Smartphones undoubtedly bring many benefits, even saving lives at times. But addiction to these devices, along with other digital technologies, has also shattered countless lives, erected walls between husbands and wives, parents and children, and stolen far too many precious hours.

For me, the answer has been strict digital moderation and complete abstinence from social media (though I still indulge occasionally in the MPU forum :rofl:).

Does this resonate with you, or am I just longing for a time when life moved at a slower, less interrupted pace?

PS. For the record, I acknowledge that the writer appears to be an addiction prone personality.

(1) Rich Cohen. 2024. What I Learned Getting Lost on America’s Backroads. WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/what-i-learned-getting-lost-on-americas-backroads-cefb5886

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This certainly resonates with me. Like some others on this forum, I’m old enough not to have grown up with social media, smart phones, the internet, or computers at all. I still remember life before the Information Age.

We’ve gained so much, but we’ve lost something too. I used to go out into the woods and no one knew where I was. I could go for a drive and just be gone. There’s a weight to being connected all the time that we don’t even notice till we really think about it.

Pair this article with the latest Krebs on Security about the rampant tracking of our real lives through our digital companions. It’s been fun being an Apple fan for the past two decades. It’s been a great hobby that has influenced my life and career. But I wonder if that part of my life and my relationship with Apple is coming to an end. I wonder if Apple has grown so massive that they are moving in directions I no longer care to follow. Virtual Reality and the Vision Pro certainly applies here.

I don’t want a computer only showing me what it wants to show me. I don’t want a computer thinking for me.

I’ve been considering swapping out my iPhone for this Mudita Kompakt. My Apple Watch for a Garmin that I only use for tracking workouts. Or maybe just nothing at all.

I lived for 25 years without the internet, I could go back to it.

Maybe.

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It is a difficult balance to strike. On one hand, I enjoy FaceTiming my children, who live in different states. While I prefer the aesthetic and feel of physical books, I like the flexibility of digital content I can manipulate, share, and use as needed. I have significantly benefited from a forum like this one. I like looking up a new recipe instantly, and I like knowing that I can be reached or can reach others in an emergency. Modern technology has many benefits, including smartphones and the internet.

But I, too, grew up in a time when I could disappear. While living in the Philippines, I would leave home early in the morning, bike to the surrounding mountains and neighborhoods, and not get home until dinner. My parents did not feel compelled to be in constant contact with me. In fact, when in college, my only contact with my parents was when I returned home over the holidays or in the summer. In my early career, clients or colleagues did not contact me in the evenings or the weekends unless there was an emergency, which there seldom was. I felt no “guilt” not responding to emails in the wee hours of the morning or late at night—there was no email. :slightly_smiling_face:

I have no desire to give up the benefits of modern technology but I work hard not to be enslaved by it.

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This is why I am going Light phone/Palma. Dissecting the internet from my phone and having the Onyx Boox Palma when I need apps. We need boundary lines.

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With the exception of podcasts, music, and audible and kindle books, I’ve rarely used my iPhone for entertainment. And since I switched to an iPad for work & entertainment I’ve also been considering a non-smartphone (that offers a WiFi hotspot).

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Wait. What? You mean you have forgotten the rush of hearing your multli-speed dial-up modem upshift into higher baud rates on those calm summer nights when the telephone lines were not swaying in the wind and causing extra static? There is simply no going back to a “slower … pace” after that.

On a serious note, even when we had no digital devices, we had stuff that we would allow to distract us. Now a days, certain things are engineered with a better ability to break barriers to when we allow them to distract us.

–
JJW

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Indeed, but of course, back “in the day,” it was difficult to carry this with you to check email while standing in line or having dinner with your spouse. The older technology was less intrusive and distracting. :rofl:

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Now a days, certain things are engineered with a better ability to break barriers to when we allow them to distract us.

You are correct. Too much of today’s technology is designed to attract and keep our attention.

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But much of the problem is our fault for allowing ourselves to be so easily distracted. We have the power to say no and to turn off notifications, our phones, etc., to reduce the temptations. We don’t have to fly to that pretty shinny light… :slightly_smiling_face:

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Your description sounds much like my own years growing up in the US and Okinawa (btw, my family spent a fun week in Baguio in the early 80’s). As long as I was home for dinner and by evening curfew I rarely saw my parents.

It can be challenging to not get sucked into the rabbit hole of social media, more so for some of us than others. I had to go cold turkey on social media in order to regain control over my attention when I realized that there were other things I’d prefer to be doing than endless doom scrolling.

This recent post by Patrick Rhone really resonated with me:

https://www.patrickrhone.net/this-is-a-tool/

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That is a good article, thanks for sharing it. I may be able to use it with others.

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Nice essays. Liked this bit (from the WSJ article):

I learned never to leave home without three books—one to read, one to write in and one filled with maps of[…]where I live.

Nick Taleb wrote about always carrying a pocket Cicero reader, not to productively work through it, but to remember to read, think and live the virtues encouraged by Cicero rather than the banalities in front of him. It would have even more needed after the iPhone launched. I wonder if the pocket Cicero became digital at some point and lost its power.

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Love that statement!

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I am once again reminded of this Douglas Adams quote:

“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

  1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
  2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
  3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

Sensationalized news stories of dubious truthfulness are nothing new.

Back in the day, ‘penny papers’ competed for attention with sensational stories. And there were plenty of such rags.

Then don’t think about it. Having my phone in my pocket is comfort, not a burden. The fact that loved ones know where I am and can see that I am ok is a comfort to them as well.

This statement makes no sense to me. My computer shows me nothing that I don’t ask for. Computers, despite snake oil salesmen and fraudsters like Altman and Musk, cannot think.

THIS!

It is tiresome hearing people blame others, in this case big tech, for the choices they make. Take accountability, be responsible for your life. Be intentional.

So instead of living in the moment, with those around him, he used the technology of the time to, escape the world around him?

Wait what? Somehow the physical medium of Cicero’s words matter?

Addiction is real. My cousin’s husband is an alcoholic. Thankfully, he has been sober for over 40 years. Others have not been so fortunate, and lives have been ruined. But most people have no problem with social drinking.

Gambling addition is real. And again lives have been ruined. But most folks can wager on a football game without life altering results.

Someone close to me lost everything he had to crack cocaine. This is an addiction that very few survive.

But I call BS on “addiction to these devices” resulting in countless lives being shattered. I know no one whose life has been “shattered” by digital technologies. I have no doubt that some people have serious problems. But “countless” is a bit of hyperbole methinks, fueled by Adams’ point three above. And just like how rock music was vilified back in the day, and how Dungeons and Dragons was turning our youth in satanists, and how writing would destroy memory (shout out to Socrates!) most people will escape unscathed.

I listen to rock music. I played D&D, I’ve been known to write, and drink, and even play black jack on (rare!) occasions. And I use a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone. And I’m doing just fine.

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I’m no doubt an outlier on this forum in that I don’t have a smartphone. I do have a pre-paid mobile which I usually take with me when I go somewhere in case I need to make a phone call, but otherwise it is not normally switched on. And I spend about $20.00 a year keeping it running.

But I’m not a complete Luddite. My work is computer-based, but because all my clients live overseas, we communicate by email, and so I never need a phone for work. I also have an iPad, but that is used mainly for Skyping.

I’ve recently been preparing next year’s programme for the local bridge club, which includes members’ contact details, and during the past few years the number of members with landlines has been gradually decreasing, and now I’m the only one with a landline. I wonder how much longer this can continue being the case.

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There has been some waffling by the FCC in the US. but it appears that any services that rely of copper landlines will be gone by January 2027. If not sooner.

One of my last projects before I retired was having all our remaining copper lines replaced with fiber. AFAIK AT&T stopped supporting copper lines for businesses a couple of years ago.

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I would challenge this statement, but it does depend on where you live. If you live in the U.K., for example, you’d seriously struggle without access to the internet. Banking is getting harder if you don’t use the internet, especially outside of cities. You can’t access most government services easily without internet, including stuff like taxes and benefits. Even things like renewing passports and driving licences is getting harder to do without the internet (we didn’t have a setup like the U.S. with DMV offices people would go to, we used to do these things at the Post Office, but many of those have closed now). My doctor’s surgery only accepts online bookings. Things like flight and train tickets are only really available online now.

I don’t agree with much of the sentiment in @MevetS’s post; whilst there is a degree of personal responsibility, it is disingenuous not to acknowledge that much of the digital ecosystem has been engineered in recent years to manipulate us (as has wider society via marketing, etc.), and it’s widely documented that some of this influence is out of the control of individuals and plays into evolutionary and biological functions humans have (that’s why it works, and why as a society we have to regulate some things). The choice not to interact requires much more effort for some people than others, and for some people they don’t have the energy to give to that effort. (Even at the very top level of this problem, decision fatigue is real, and someone who has spent all day making difficult decisions may simply not have the energy to fight the temptation to go on social media when they’re tired.)

The WSJ person had the capacity to step away and remove the initial choice, thus saving themselves from the daily choice of whether to go on social media or not. But realistically it’s very difficult for many people to create that capacity for themselves.

Having said all of that, it’s may just be a quirk of my social groups but I do not see this tech addiction the media occasionally scares us with. The majority of the children I know have tech curfews imposed by their parents, and I don’t really know any adults that don’t put away their devices at appropriate times… Of course, I’m a millennial and grew up on the internet, so what I consider “an appropriate time” versus what other people might consider “an appropriate time” might differ :joy:

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I do, if you count people killed by distracted drivers. Pedestrian deaths are at a 40 year high.

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I know no one whose life has been “shattered” by digital technologies.

Sadly, I do. Children who lost parents and parents who lost children due to texting while driving. :cry:

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Kids doing stupid things in cars is nothing new. It is always sad when this happens. I lost friends in high school because of a variety of car related incidents (not all alcohol related). I graduated high school in 1978.

Marketing has always been about manipulating desire. Some on this forum may remember the “subliminal seduction” hysteria of the early 1980s.

Neither are new. And both present challenges. But digital technologies are just the latest bugaboo in a culture that always looking for a scapegoat and blames someone else and rather than taking accountability.

Should kids have screen time limits? I don’t know. But if so, not because screen time in and of itself is bad, but because of the same reasons they aren’t allowed to eat nothing but cookies and ice cream. And are forced to eat vegetables. Physical activity is a good thing, which is why I wasn’t allowed to come home from school and sit in front of the TV until dinner. But I was also allowed plenty of time to sit and read.

And I’ll say it again, most people have no issue with digital technologies (as with alcohol and gambling). It is the demonizing hyperbole that makes it very hard to address any real issues.

Only once we get past the “digital = darkness and evil” will we be able to address the cases where it is a real issue.

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I agree that there is hyperbole and unwarranted demonization of technology. But, the excesses do not negate the fact that addiction to technology is well documented.

I too often see people texting while driving — yes, people do many things they should not do while driving — but texting can be more dangerous than many, not all, other activities while driving because one’s eyes tend to be off the road longer when texting. I’ve followed people swerving on the road in front of me while texting; I all too frequently have to lightly hit my horn at a light because the driver can’t resist picking up the phone to text; I’ve too frequently almost been hit from behind by drivers who were looking at their phone and did not realize I’d slowed or stopped. Apart from driving, when I see parents ignoring their children while engrossed in their phones, when I see young people sitting at the same table glued to their phones instead of talking to each other, when classroom instruction is ignored by students sneaking looks at their phones (a problem we eliminated four years ago with a cell phone ban and we are a 1:1 iPad school so very supportive of educational technology), we have a problem. I could go on a lengthy missive about social media, but I’ll spare you. :slightly_smiling_face:

We may have to agree to disagree, :slightly_smiling_face: but I believe we have created a problem that needs to be prudently addressed with a balanced and nuanced approach.

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A few years ago at a dinner party, a friend made the statement, “There has been no progress in civil rights in my lifetime. Nothing has changed.” I looked at her as if she had two heads.

We are approximately the same age. In my lifetime, among other things, the color of one’s skin:

  • Determined the school they went to.
  • Determined where they could sit on a bus.
  • Determined what bathroom they could use.
  • Determined the door they could use to enter restaurants and hotels (if they could at all).

No progress!

I pointed these things out and she continued to argue. “But this …” and “but what about this …”.

Because of the way she framed the argument, we were adversaries. Had she instead said, “while there has been progress, there is still a way to go in civil rights”, we would have been allies.

Are you really arguing that the lives shattered by technology cannot be counted? (I think we can at least put a limit of 8.5 billion on it. :slight_smile: )

Addiction to alcohol is well documented. Addiction to gambling is well documented. But we no longer demonize either, and instead treat the real problem that some people are more susceptible that others. And understand that for most there is no problem.

The excesses turn would be allies into adversaries. And people, like you and I, who should be working together addressing the real issues, and there are real issues, are not.

We agree. But while sloppy thinking and hyperbole may sell books and eyeballs, it is intellectually lazy. And is no way a “balanced and nuanced approach”.

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