(But that's not quite right. The truth is I drive myself to distraction. I live to be distracted, and I look forward to my weekly laundromat visits for just that reason. Once my load is in, I settle on the hard fiberglass couch, cheeseburger in hand. I take in the antiseptic atmosphere and all the pop-pleb tv I've missed out on throughout the week. With its appalling, eternal commercials.)
-The diversion du jour was Live! with Kelly and Michael. At one point, a fellow was asked what was the longest period he'd spent without his phone. 'A few hours,' he said. How did it feel? he was asked. 'I felt naked.'
Now, that's something. I've heard of all sorts of applications for the phone, but I've never heard of anyone wearing one.
Day after day, flanks and swarms and hordes of personless persons are conveyed about, phones in hands like dowsing wands. It's as if their devices were carbureting their engines - texting, twittering, snapchatting, candycrushing them from location A to B. But not just vehicles, our phones have become our tanks and arsenals - our technological monstrosity. Our bluetooth headsets hooked onto skulls like monstrous craniopagic twins, our phones like bionic lumps under the skin of our palms, have become a sort of cyborg armor we wear, a technoskeleton without which we feel truly imperiled.
I imagine the obsession in this way: I reaffix the prehistoric prefix tele- : "I cannot live without my telephone. The other day my telephone died and left me defenseless. My life completely changed once I got my new telephone. I go to sleep with my telephone. I wake up and first thing, I consult my telephone. I bring my telephone into the bathroom when I shower. My telephone's always in the passenger seat when I drive. I take my telephone to dinner and on vacations. I cannot imagine my existence without my telephone. My telephone has replaced my lover, my pet, my therapist. If I leave my telephone at home, I'm worthless."
A quaint, almost endearing fetishism.
But not so quaint when we consider the burden, the weight of our crutches: Everywhere you see a person with a smartphone, replace it in your mind's eye with a rotary phone. Maybe the base is hooked onto their hip or nestled in their lap; they're holding the handset at eye level, drooling over it, tapping a hypnotized finger on the transmitter, peering into the abyss of the receiver's swiss-cheese casing. Imagine them also with an underwood typewriter strapped to their belly, a daguerrotype camera protruding from their breast, a flash-lamp, an astrolabe, an encyclopedia, an abacus, an electromagnetic telegraph, a street atlas, a gramophone, a filing cabinet, and a kitten somewhere hitched to their midriff. They falter through the streets like failed, farcical futurists.
Once, there was a time when all was ram's horns and ear trumpets, lover's phones and speaking tubes. Through the advance of the electro-chemical / -magnetic telegraph, the water cum carbon microphone, the multiplex switchboard, pulse dialing, and a myriad of other technologies, the zoetropic world of the past instantly became a buzz of frequencies and communiques. Once the Agamemnon and Niagara kissed cables in the Atlantic, there was no going back - the invasion had begun. Now, it has metastasized into a full-on take-over.
According to a 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center, 46% of all American adults now own an ego-phone - up an unbelievable 25% from 2011. We can barely phone through a sentence without phoning the word 'phone' multiple times. We talk about our phones as if they were cars, people, houses, life-goals. Panhandlers and drifters own phones long before they have shelter. 6 year-old girls have phones long before they're women. Everywhere you see flanks and swarms and hordes of phones taking their humans out for a walk and shitting them.
The word 'phone' derives from a Greek word related to 'voice' or 'sound.' 'Tele-' means 'far off, afar, at or to a distance.' 'Telephone' = distant sound. Built into the very definition is an idea of distance. But a distance that is bridged, that is obviated by technology. However, the more our surrogate-identity-phones weevil their way into our lives, the more truly distant we become. I once had a friend (may he rest in peace) who refused to take notes in the lecture-hall, claiming that it prevented him from really listening to and absorbing the speech. How much more of an impediment that we need our selfie-sticks on a mountain-climb, that our first impulse at the aquarium is to instragram. That before we even begin to enjoy a concert or a sunset, we tweet about it.
That alone would be understandable. It's understandable that modern people are in a constant search for importance, and recording their minutest affairs helps provide them with that importance.
But now, people whip out their phones without even knowing why. I board the subway, I get out my phone. I'm in line at the bank, I get out my phone. I order a beer, I get out my phone. I'm waiting for a sandwich, I get out my phone. I drop a deuce, I get out my phone. I get out my phone, I get out my phone. More than half the time, I do it to do it. Because it feels better to have my phone in hand than not. Because it gives me a way out, some plausible deniability, a contrived but acceptable disengagement. I'm not being rude. I'm not disassociating. I'm not bored or afraid or at a loss for words or terrified by spontaneity. I'm just on my phone. Natural as can be.
When do I feel most naked? It's always when I'm held accountable for my true sentiments. When I can no longer hide behind posturing. When I'm called to task for my true interests. I'm attracted to a girl on the subway. I'm curious about the book you're reading. There's a snake-charmer in Union Square. I hear a strain of merengue down the avenue. Spy a billboard that arrests my attention. Or maybe some root has interpolated the pavement. I'm called on to observe by that small part of me still untouched by my remora-phone. In these moments, it takes a superior amount of courage for me to stop, smile, and indulge. I too want to be the tuned-out automaton everyone makes themselves out to be. I too want to scatter myselfie all over space and disregard the stimuli. But why do I want this? Because it requires work and personality, originality and imagination to parse out the world. And most of the time, I just haven't the energy.
Now, that's something. I've heard of all sorts of applications for the phone, but I've never heard of anyone wearing one.
Day after day, flanks and swarms and hordes of personless persons are conveyed about, phones in hands like dowsing wands. It's as if their devices were carbureting their engines - texting, twittering, snapchatting, candycrushing them from location A to B. But not just vehicles, our phones have become our tanks and arsenals - our technological monstrosity. Our bluetooth headsets hooked onto skulls like monstrous craniopagic twins, our phones like bionic lumps under the skin of our palms, have become a sort of cyborg armor we wear, a technoskeleton without which we feel truly imperiled.
I imagine the obsession in this way: I reaffix the prehistoric prefix tele- : "I cannot live without my telephone. The other day my telephone died and left me defenseless. My life completely changed once I got my new telephone. I go to sleep with my telephone. I wake up and first thing, I consult my telephone. I bring my telephone into the bathroom when I shower. My telephone's always in the passenger seat when I drive. I take my telephone to dinner and on vacations. I cannot imagine my existence without my telephone. My telephone has replaced my lover, my pet, my therapist. If I leave my telephone at home, I'm worthless."
A quaint, almost endearing fetishism.
But not so quaint when we consider the burden, the weight of our crutches: Everywhere you see a person with a smartphone, replace it in your mind's eye with a rotary phone. Maybe the base is hooked onto their hip or nestled in their lap; they're holding the handset at eye level, drooling over it, tapping a hypnotized finger on the transmitter, peering into the abyss of the receiver's swiss-cheese casing. Imagine them also with an underwood typewriter strapped to their belly, a daguerrotype camera protruding from their breast, a flash-lamp, an astrolabe, an encyclopedia, an abacus, an electromagnetic telegraph, a street atlas, a gramophone, a filing cabinet, and a kitten somewhere hitched to their midriff. They falter through the streets like failed, farcical futurists.
Once, there was a time when all was ram's horns and ear trumpets, lover's phones and speaking tubes. Through the advance of the electro-chemical / -magnetic telegraph, the water cum carbon microphone, the multiplex switchboard, pulse dialing, and a myriad of other technologies, the zoetropic world of the past instantly became a buzz of frequencies and communiques. Once the Agamemnon and Niagara kissed cables in the Atlantic, there was no going back - the invasion had begun. Now, it has metastasized into a full-on take-over.
According to a 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center, 46% of all American adults now own an ego-phone - up an unbelievable 25% from 2011. We can barely phone through a sentence without phoning the word 'phone' multiple times. We talk about our phones as if they were cars, people, houses, life-goals. Panhandlers and drifters own phones long before they have shelter. 6 year-old girls have phones long before they're women. Everywhere you see flanks and swarms and hordes of phones taking their humans out for a walk and shitting them.
The word 'phone' derives from a Greek word related to 'voice' or 'sound.' 'Tele-' means 'far off, afar, at or to a distance.' 'Telephone' = distant sound. Built into the very definition is an idea of distance. But a distance that is bridged, that is obviated by technology. However, the more our surrogate-identity-phones weevil their way into our lives, the more truly distant we become. I once had a friend (may he rest in peace) who refused to take notes in the lecture-hall, claiming that it prevented him from really listening to and absorbing the speech. How much more of an impediment that we need our selfie-sticks on a mountain-climb, that our first impulse at the aquarium is to instragram. That before we even begin to enjoy a concert or a sunset, we tweet about it.
That alone would be understandable. It's understandable that modern people are in a constant search for importance, and recording their minutest affairs helps provide them with that importance.
But now, people whip out their phones without even knowing why. I board the subway, I get out my phone. I'm in line at the bank, I get out my phone. I order a beer, I get out my phone. I'm waiting for a sandwich, I get out my phone. I drop a deuce, I get out my phone. I get out my phone, I get out my phone. More than half the time, I do it to do it. Because it feels better to have my phone in hand than not. Because it gives me a way out, some plausible deniability, a contrived but acceptable disengagement. I'm not being rude. I'm not disassociating. I'm not bored or afraid or at a loss for words or terrified by spontaneity. I'm just on my phone. Natural as can be.
When do I feel most naked? It's always when I'm held accountable for my true sentiments. When I can no longer hide behind posturing. When I'm called to task for my true interests. I'm attracted to a girl on the subway. I'm curious about the book you're reading. There's a snake-charmer in Union Square. I hear a strain of merengue down the avenue. Spy a billboard that arrests my attention. Or maybe some root has interpolated the pavement. I'm called on to observe by that small part of me still untouched by my remora-phone. In these moments, it takes a superior amount of courage for me to stop, smile, and indulge. I too want to be the tuned-out automaton everyone makes themselves out to be. I too want to scatter myselfie all over space and disregard the stimuli. But why do I want this? Because it requires work and personality, originality and imagination to parse out the world. And most of the time, I just haven't the energy.
What I really want though is to be naked all the time. I want my armor to shingle off like scales from my eyes. I'd like to place a phone-call, only one, and then hang up the receiver for good. I'd like to call up myself from 20 years ago and see how I'm getting on. If only to check in, chew the fat, talk my own ear off, while away the midnight hours, and wake up the next morning with the dial-tone in my ear.
As it is though, I feel like an Extra-Terrestrial on Earth, trying so hard to phone home, across galaxies of bad habits and histories.
Excellent!! Soooo true! How did we get here??
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