I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my life, which has happened many times before. Life is just one crossroad after another. Is it a crossroad or a crossroads? Seems like crossroads can be singular or plural. Is that right? Anyway, I’m at a crossing of roads, of sorts. New beginnings, big decisions, life changes and all that. My health has improved a lot. My diet changed for the better, I stopped drinking, I’m exercising more, and my sleep… well, it hasn’t gotten worse, that’s for sure.
Within this streak of self-improvement, I decided to get rid of my smartphone. I’m done with it! I. Am. Done. It’s a huge time waster, it’s designed to play little addictive tricks on my brain, social media is bad for mental health, all of that and much more. I feel like we all know most of that. Phone bad. Phone very very bad.
Now I’m not some genius or hero for giving up my smartphone. Far from it. I’m a genius/hero for other reasons, obviously. Anyway, I still feel like I need some kind of cell phone because sometimes my boss has to call me when we’re working in different locations. I still have my old LG cell phone, the one before my smartphone. It’s a good phone. It slides up for a full keyboard. I charged it, it held the charge, and all the buttons worked perfectly.
So I took it to the Verizon store to get the old phone in service again with my current phone number. But no. The LG phone is 3G, which doesn’t exist any more, apparently. So this cell phone, which is perfectly functional, just as much as it was the day I got it, is now completely useless. Might as well be a clump of dirt. I was disappointed by that. I clearly don’t understand cellular technology at all, but I really thought I would be able to just use a cell phone to make calls and texts. Is that a stupid thing to expect? I mean, you can use a telephone from decades and decades ago, but with cell phones I guess you gotta stay with the times or get left behind.
I asked the guy at the Verizon store if they had any flip phones that still work, and they had one, but it was around $150. I thought it’d be like $30 because of how [apparently] obsolete they are. I left. What I really want is to have a basic phone with a really cheap plan. That’s all I want in this world. I’m paying a lot for my infinite, unlimited, inexhaustible amount of data and whatnot. Mint Mobile, that’s what I want. But there are no Mint Mobile stores, at least not anywhere near me. But hey, there’s a Cricket Wireless store pretty close by. They’re pretty cheap, I think.
The next stop on my long journey was, in fact, Cricket Wireless. I told the clerk that I wanted a new phone, and she presented a number of intriguing offers. And they were really good deals, honestly. If you buy a certain plan for a certain duration, you get a certain smartphone. Pretty advanced phone, but I explained that I really really really wanted a phone that just does talk and text. She got one, she showed me the plan, and it was fine. But then it wasn’t.
See, in order to transfer my current phone number to the new Cricket Wireless flip phone, I needed my current T-Mobile account # and transfer # and PIN of some kind. I don’t have that. “It’s on your T-Mobile app,” she says. I don’t have that. “Well, there’s a T-Mobile store a few doors down, they can help you.” Another obstacle on our hero’s journey! I ask the T-Mobile guy for the info and he says, “It’s on your T-Mobile app.” I don’t have that. “You gotta call customer service then, we can’t look up that info in the store.” I called, and there was a thirty-minute wait so they were gonna call me back. At this point I knew it was going to be a total nightmare to get the necessary information.
When I first got the smartphone, I had Sprint. I got the phone from the Sprint store, I used Sprint data and Sprint calls and texts, I paid my bills to Sprint, and I had a Sprint app and all that. Eventually, Sprint was absorbed by T-Mobile. That’s fine, but I never got fully integrated into T-Mobile. I didn’t get an account number or any account at all. For a while I was still paying my bill via the Sprint app. Then, one year ago, I was about to leave the United States for a few months, so I wanted to put a pause on my phone plan since I was in a month-to-month situation anyway.
Boy, did that prove to be impossible.
I got stuck in some sort of unsolvable labyrinth of transferring phone calls. I talked to a Sprint guy, then a T-Mobile guy, then another Sprint guy, and on and on. I gave them my phone number, name, date of birth, all the information I could, but it was futile. I seem to have fallen into some kind of cellular black hole. They know I have to pay every month [I just “pay as guest” from the link in their automatic text reminder], but they can’t find me in their system. It was like Sisyphus but instead of pushing a boulder forever, it’s being on the phone forever. Not quite as bad.
Anyway, I walked around Target, waiting for T-Mobile to call me back, and I decided, “Fuck it, I’ll just buy a flip phone here at Target, and figure out a way to get my phone number on it with a cheap plan.” And that’s what I did. There were still a few hurdles, but I don’t want to get into them now. I’ve already written 1,000 words about buying a cell phone.
So, taking a step back in technology can be surprisingly difficult. Then why do it? As I said, social media is manipulative, it makes you sad, it’s addictive by design. Your phone tracks you and it and the more you use your phone, the more you become dependent on it. There are so many aspects of social media and smartphones that are bad for our well-being. When I bring up these points, many people look at me as if I’m explaining that the sky is blue. Of course social media and smartphones are bad for mental health, everyone knows that, so why bring it up? I find this very bizarre, but hey, that’s the nature of addiction. I know that alcohol is bad for me, but I still occasionally drink it.
Algorithm. I’ve grown to hate this word and all it encompasses. The almighty algorithms that dominate our digital lives, that affect our non-digital lives as well. Now I’m just an idiot, and I don’t know what an algorithm really is. Maybe it’s a very general computer term, and when I use word “algorithm,” what I’m talking about are the super advanced algorithms of the biggest tech companies, that absorb and process unimaginable amounts of data, then spew out a stream of content uniquely tailored to you.
I don’t know the future, but one would have to imagine that personal data collection will become more advanced and invasive, and the algorithms will become more advanced at personalizing things for us, if we allow them. Google Home, Google Pay, Google Mail [gmail], Google Maps, and YouTube all collaborate to form this giant tapestry of your activity, then it suggests the next stitch.
But it doesn’t necessarily suggest things that will improve our lives. It merely suggests things we’re most likely to click on, videos we’re most likely to watch, posts that will most likely keep us scrolling, and products we’re most likely to buy, whether those things are good for us or not. We seem to be approaching a bastardized version of the Mirror of Erised. Instead of showing our deepest, most desperate desires, our phones reflect our most basic consumerist impulses.
So I don’t really care for algorithms and I severely dislike how much they’ve come to infect our way of life. But just because I got rid of my smartphone does not mean that I have rid myself of the influence of algorithms. I’m trying to get a new job, for instance, which puts me at the mercy of the sneaky, devilish algorithms of LinkedIn and Indeed and Ziprecruiter and so on. I’m still beholden to algorithms, unfortunately. And then there’s the fact that I’m posting this in the first place! There are algorithms that factor into the popularity of this very post. They’re watching me! And I’m cognizant of their presence, so I try to choose the right tags, post at the right time, give a good title, so that the algorithm may boost the post just a little bit. Trying to please an algorithm is a soulless experience.
I guess I’m trying to make the points that current technology creates problems, the pervasiveness of algorithms in our lives is bad, and I recommend taking steps backward, like getting rid of your smartphone. I already feel better without my smartphone, and I hope to take more steps backward soon.
Then there’s this other thing called A.I. Or, as Steven Spielberg calls it, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” Why does he do that? Just call the movie A.I. We know that you’re not making a biopic of Allen Iverson, Steven. He did the same thing with “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” I’m surprised he didn’t name his 2016 film “BFG: Big Friendly Giant.”
Anyway, I don’t fully understand A.I., and sometimes people equate that lack of understanding with an illegitimacy of critique. You can’t criticize the technology, they say, unless you fully understand it. That’s obviously ridiculous. There is a lot of evidence to support the claim that social media applications have a generally negative impact on our mental health. I don’t have to be a neuroscientist, psychologist, computer programmer, and big tech CEO to know that and criticize it.
So, A.I. has tremendous potential. Some of the potential is good, like assistance with farming practices and assistance with medical diagnosis/treatment. But it also has extremely negative potential such as disrupting economic/financial systems, A.I.-infused military weapons for mass destruction and targeted assassination, more advanced surveillance than any in history, and a possible “point of no return,” where A.I. dominates so much of our civilization that it becomes extremely difficult [or impossible] for an individual to secure housing, food, or other necessities without A.I. being involved in some way.
We don’t really know, but it could lead to some very bad things. We ought to try putting some reins on technology before it’s too late. There are, of course, funny “A.I.-generated,” or so the channels claim, YouTube videos. Some have Elvis Presley singing that he likes big butts and he cannot lie, some feature Harry Potter characters as bodybuilders, and some show Donald Trump and Joe Biden playing video games together. They’re funny, to be honest. They can be funny. Then someone will comment something to the effect of: “*AI will take over the world!* Meanwhile AI:” As if the ridiculousness of the videos negates the possibility of A.I. being used for nefarious purposes. As if A.I. can’t be used for different things. It’d be like if someone said, “how can drones be used for bad things when I’m using one to take beautiful footage of Hawaii?”
Anyway, I just wanna mention one more specific example about technology that just bugs me. When I was in middle school, there was a device capable of holding thousands upon thousands of songs. It was small enough to fit in your pocket or purse, with headphones tied around it. It was incredibly easy to use. You just plug it in and drag songs onto the device. Then on the device you can find music by artist, by album, by song, you could shuffle, you could make playlists, there were no ads, it was amazing. It was perfect.
And now the most common way to listen to music is to download an app. You can make playlists, but you can’t listen to them in order, it’s always on shuffle, and there’s a few obnoxious advertisements after every three or four songs. You can’t listen to full albums. You can’t even always listen to specific songs. You pick a song, and it generates a playlist around that song, which may start with that song. And you have a limited number of skips. If you don’t like these features, you have to pay $10 every month. Month after month after month after month, just to have the app behave like the device from decades ago. What a sick joke.
I still have the old device, but the battery doesn’t work. This is another shitty aspect of technology, the shelf life. The product, the iPod, could be used for my whole life, as long as I can change out the battery. But that’s not valuable to the company that makes the iPod, so the plan is to use the device for a couple years, then set it down forever. Fucking stupid, I’m gonna figure out a way to fix the battery. Bye!
Lefty Forrester 