“Just as we need certain things to suck in order for others to register as cool (Beavis and Butthead, 1994, MTV), so too must we experience resistance or difficulty in order to understand the nature and depth of our own desires…
…Frictionless exchange almost always involves an unseen toll. One of the most insidious features of our digital regime is the way in which it mystifies the role of labor in daily economic life…
…Few devices have done more to obscure the efforts of human labor than the smartphone. Fewer still have vacuumed out of our lives as much human interaction as has been lost to our oblong, digital assistants…
…We are everywhere connected, and yet we are unable to connect…
-Gabriel Kahane, “In Defense of Friction.” gabrielkahane.substack.com. April 26, 2022.
Strange little essay in the “you’d be happier without your smartphone” genre. Some real nuggets in it.
I’m thinking of updating my phone. Part of me wants to get a 5G phone, for more speed, presumably the Pixel 6a 5G that is likely to be announced next month. Part of me wants to get a Mudita Pure, which is basically a modern flip-phone with a long battery life. Part of me wants to get a PinePhone, a functioning Linux phone. Part of me thinks I should just keep using the old S5 with LineageOS I bought off eBay for ~$50.
The thing that this essay brings to mind for me is that there’s a lot of parts and different, conflicting wants in that paragraph above. In the end, it really doesn’t matter which phone I use. If you were to review the different devices I have used in my life, did any of them really matter? At the same time, an old S5 with LineageOS is a temperamental phone: slow, a flashing display when it is cold, and other problems.
It makes me think of that Amish story, where the question is whether a tool is both good for the individuals and the communities using it. Does having access to social media through a phone bind us closer to each other? Or, enable connections that wouldn’t happen otherwise? In some cases, it does. But, there are costs too. How many of us are taking a really close look at that ledger?
cafebedouin.org 