I own an iPhone now. A month ago I was playing an RPO concert when my old cellphone was stolen from my coat pocket backstage, along with several purses (not mine) and the much more valuable phones contained therein. To my knowledge, none of the "smarter" phones in the purses were returned, but my cellphone (which had to be dialed via rotary wheel) was found lying on Monroe Avenue by a kind stranger several days later. It had been a great inconvenience to me to be without a cellphone even for a few days; I found that I missed it mostly as a timepiece. As I reflected on my situation I came to realize that if not even a thief wanted my old phone, I should probably get a new one.
So I did. I upgraded to an iPhone last week, and I love it. It can make phone calls, send text messages, check email, check facebook, take high quality photos and video, watch videos from Youtube, take notes, tell the weather, get the news, get maps and directions, tune, keep time, reference Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, download books, keep my bank account, and tell me which vintage wine to buy. So naturally, I thought of Neil Postman.
1) What is the probem to which my iPhone is a solution?
The iPhone trafficks more information and faster. It is exceeding convenient to have this information (maps, a calendar, a tuner) in my pocket in one small device. But, I admit, it would be easy to access all of the information the iPhone offers in the same way my parents and their parents did. I could keep maps in my car, I could keep a datebook in my pocket, and I could use an electronic tuner or even a tuning fork. The genius of the iPhone is that it makes accessing maps, calendars, and tuners entertaining.
2) Whose problem is it actually?
The problem is mine, if the problem is that I need to be entertained. Apparently I am become a dullard, if the outside world and its wonderful problems are boring. There are any number of real problems in my life and at large that urgently need solving, but none of them are rooted in being uninteresting. The problem is apparently that I am uninteresting, or even worse, uninterested.
3) What other problems will be created by my using this device?
For one, I don't think it's healthy to step so quickly and easily between the news that the Boko Haram are bombing Nigeria and my Scrabble game. They are, on the iPhone, literally two finger-flicks away. The problem of information scarcity is that one might never know about the Boko Haram or what they are doing. The problem of information glut is that, juxtaposed next to Scrabble and a hundred other trivialities, everything might begin to mean nothing at all. Secondly, I have already given up four or five human relationships since I've owned the device. I no longer have to speak with the bookseller in S-Port (I can buy books online easily now), I don't have to ask the attendant at the wineshop what New York vintage he'd recommend (I have that expertise on my phone), I don't have to speak to the receptionist at the optometrist (I can schedule an appointment on their website), I don't even need to stop by the LCS office to drop off my attendance (I can email it in.) Some of these problems aren't new to the iPhone, but the ease and centrality of the devices exacerbates these already-present problems. Lastly, and most terrifying of all, I've brought into this world a person for whom I am responsible who is growing up in an age where the iPhone is a given. It falls on me to teach him kind and charitable human relationships, the sensible ordering of one's worldview, and the balance between productive work and leisure, all while interpreting with him a device that is brand new for me.
Pray for James.
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