This feels like an important question, with a good "grand perspective" on the whole thing we find ourselves embedded into every day...
>There’s a bottleneck here: our interfaces haven’t evolved to handle the flood of information that’s overflowing our minds. Our interfaces have been feeding us, but don’t allow for any digesting.
> How can we use the web as a medium to think, not over months or years, but over a lifetime? How do you create context from an infinitely rotating roster of indistinguishable tabs?
Always nice when people actually explain cryptics - I think too many people still see it as a bit of a "Well I'm cleverer than thee" thing, when there's actually a fair bit of structure and looking-stuff-up to it really. (A bit like coding, I guess...)
Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I'm busy preparing for a holiday and then will be on holiday (obviously...) so don't quite have time to respond to everyone, but keep the discussion going and I'm hoping to collate things into a summary document elsewhere when I get back.
Yes, the question of how we define "need" is absolutely a key point here, and I guess I deliberately left it open to interpretation as I think it's subjective, but also that how we define it can change as we think about it and question it too.
The online/offline benefits always irks me - I mean I get the economics behind pushing people to be more "convenient" (on behalf of the company, usually) but it avoids the entire conversation about digital exclusion and accessibility. Strangely, I often see parking rates cost more when you use the app, as you get charged for paying with their card service. Ho hum.
Yeah that was kind of a "strange" limbo time - I remember going traveling and having to find internet cafes or hotel computers to use to send messages back home. Feels like ripe material and a lens for thinking about these things again...
Great to have you here - as I say, everyone will be different, but the key bit is to think about yourself and what you want to do differently. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks - I think acknowledging burnout, multitasking, even "productivity" as a potential anti-pattern is definitely one of the first, most important steps. It feels like we're looked down upon for wanting to do less, or for taking a break. Who knows, maybe there's some sanity left in the world and things will change bit-by-bit :)
Discussing smartphone use with various people recently, I quickly come back to the same question - what do you need it for? This is not a masked way of saying they don't need a smartphone, but a genuine question. I'm personally happy to accept that people use smartphones for a variety of reasons, from professional work, to having to pay for parking, and from medical technology to not having access to laptops or computers.
So maybe a stepping stone to better co-design of smartphone use is to be more open about what we need to use our phones for, and why we carry them around with us. This post, then, is a bit of an experiment to start surfacing thoughts. The question is applicable to all devices, but I figure a) better to start somewhere specific, and b) smartphones are a particularly "invasive" device. So...
Which functions on your smartphone do you feel you NEED it for, and why?
To start, I'd say there are some things I like to have my phone on me for - camera, photo editing, note-taking. But the things I probably need it for on the go are:
- Necessary contact from family and friends via phone call, text and (specific) group chats
- Parking apps, as paying by machine often isn't available here
- Finding directions in strange places
- Access to passwords and one-time codes
- Transferring emergency funds to kids' bank cards
- Checking my calendar
I guess there will be a lot of overlap, but that's good to know. And it would also be interesting to know what less common cases exist: I think a mindful tech movement risks coming from a privileged position, and so awareness of these less common needs is all an essential part of the discussion.
There are no right or wrong answers here, just the opportunity to open up and find out from others :)
Thought I would start with one of my own recent posts, about setting up a separate account on my Android phone. I'm not quite ready or able to give up a smartphone altogether, but this is a good compromise for me.
So far, I really enjoy switching to the quiet mode, and generally use it by default - especially if I'm with others or am out and about. And it's just slow enough that I don't switch back unless I need to.
Greetings, this is a first post to the Mindful Technology community.
The community is a space to discuss ways of avoiding the confusion, struggle and burnout of using modern technology, for whatever reason. It is a way to regain some sense of control and calmness in a world which seems to demand we treat these things with distaste.
Everyone will have different ideas of what counts as Mindful Technology, and this is fine - technology is always subjective, and dependent on context. There are no right or wrong answers here, just interesting and alternative perspectives, and gentle encouragement to think more consciously about the tools that we use.
Enjoy the space.