In Defense of the Smartphone II

      The conquering of the world by smartphones has certainly been one of the most visible and most significant technological changes we have witnessed in our lifetimes.   

      Opinions on whether it has been a change for the better most definitely differ.

     A month ago I suggested that we post on this site an intelligent and interesting, though in my view wrongheaded, screed by James Marriott, who thinks the smartphone has been a giant step backwards. Then we published my rebuttal, in which I argued that the smartphone is just another new technology that makes old folks nervous but ends up broadening horizons. And, because smartphones have become such an important part of our lives, we published my friend and colleague Neil Offen’s own thoughtful attack on the smartphone and its consequences: a rebuttal of my rebuttal.

      But this is a big subject and, given the time we’re all spending on our phones, an important one. There’s more I want to say—this time in a satirical vein, or at least an attempt at a satirical vein:

      Of course, these smartphones, which most of us now lug around and consult obsessively, are ruining our lives:

•       Smartphones demand that we be capable of remaining in touch with and able to communicate—in writing, on the phone or on video—with friends and family even when we or they are out and about, even while on different continents.

•       Smartphones, with their map apps, insist that we be able easily to know where we are and where we should be heading, using any available form of transportation, wherever in the world we find ourselves.

•       Smartphones require us to have the ability to have up-to-the-minute access to the latest news, the latest journalism anywhere, whenever we want, in a medium of our choice: type, podcast or video.

•       Smartphones oblige our fingers be able to access at any time a large selection of the world’s entertainments: from great novels to great films to great musical performances, to really lousy but addictive-short videos and even, if we are so inclined and of age, pornography.

•       Smartphones insist that we should have in our pocket at all times the book we are reading or the film we are watching, as well as the one we have just finished and the ones we are thinking reading or watching next.

•       And, in forcing us to have access to all this entertainment and information, smartphones have deprived us of most opportunities to experience good, old-fashioned, inspiring boredom.

      It gets worse:

•       Smartphones impose upon us the opportunity not just to read sentences about places or vistas or scenes but actually to look at those places or vistas or scenes, to not just read what someone is saying but to actually hear and watch that person saying it. Thus, as the defenders of print maintain, depleting our imaginations. Indeed, the shift from reading lines of print to actually seeing stuff on a screen, James Marriott writes, leads to “not only the loss of information and intelligence, but a tragic impoverishing of the human experience.” (The same reason why the blind are so much better off than the sighted.)

•       Moreover, since we are more often now actually seeing moments of life being lived on our phones—rather than reading lines of print in a newspaper, a magazine or a book about life being lived—some of us, particularly some of the younger of us, may indeed be less skilled at understanding the lines of print that still dominate IQ or international PISA intelligence tests. It is true that such scores started declining a bit before smartphones caught on and the pandemic accelerated the decline, but still, it is clear that smartphones—by enabling us to actually see stuff—are making us stupider.

•       And the “art,” if you can call it that, that is accessed through these so-called smartphones—often short, quick-cut videos, combining moving images with words and often music— deprive us of the crucial opportunity to see the world the way it was intended to be seen or imagined: through straight lines of black letters printed on white pages.

•      Of course, the final disappointment is that the smartphone and in particular the short, quick TikTok or YouTube videos our smartphones often feature—full of scenes, talk, music and words—shamefully have not yet, in year 18 since the iPhone’s debut, produced work anywhere near as great as that the printing press has achieved in its mere 575 years of existence.