Responses to the Reading (1/4)

Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by Douglas Rushkoff, Chapter 1

The expectation of immediacy the article discusses is a concept that I spend a lot of time thinking about.  When iPhones first came out I was turned off by the fact that my friends now stood around with their noses in their devices.  I held out for a while, and when I finally purchased my own iPhone I tried at first to be really conscious of my usage of it.  But now I am sorry to say that I am just as glued to my device as any other millennial.  The smart phone almost feels like the new cigarette: it's what you use when you're alone or waiting and you want to look like you're cool and aloof.  Plus, it's addictive and potentially causes cancer.  But we don't only check our phones out of boredom.  As the article asserts, we constantly check our phones because we feel like we have to.  Who hasn't had the experience of leaving their phone unattended for an hour or so only to return to 80 new messages from group text explosion?  But none of this anxiety is necessary.  We can choose to live without it.  As Rushkoff explains, it is only a matter of setting boundaries.  This summer I was away working at a camp in Maine for two months.  I had no cell phone service, and limited access to wifi.  And I survived.  When I returned, everything went back to how it had been.  I hadn't lost any friends, and my Instagram posts were met with the same scattered likes and responses they had gotten before.  Yet here I sit, writing this post with my phone right next to me, constantly checking to see if it buzzed without me noticing.

"Rather than accepting each tool’s needs as a necessary compromise in our passively technologized lifestyles, we can instead exploit those very same leanings to make ourselves more human." (Rushkoff, page 34)

I LOVE this quotation.  Technology is a tool.  We must be conscious of how we use it to further our own happiness and not allow ourselves to be enslaved by it.  Our phones and our computers are there to make our lives easier and better, not to create new stressors and pavlovian responses.  We all must work on prioritizing our own happiness and only allowing new technologies into our world that further our happiness.  For example, I can use my computer and phone to plan a weekend hiking trip with my friends or a bike ride in Central Park.  Then I can put the devices away and allow myself to be fully immersed in the experience.