I was thinking about tech recently…actually, I think about tech often, but this was specific: we have all these tools to (in theory) make our lives easier, like digital assistants and smart appliances, and we have all sorts of tools for health tracking and improvement; yet, we are mostly more unhappy/dissatisfied (and less healthy) than ever.
Why? I think one part of it is that we are making ourselves miserable by reducing our friction with/in life. Matthew Crawford1 writes a lot about this. I think our brains fire better when we are trying to do something difficult, and especially so when we are doing something that requires our bodies as well as our minds (like fixing things, riding a motorcycle, driving a stick shift, navigating). Remove that friction, the difficulty, and our brains look for it someplace else. Boom, there it is: dissatisfaction, discomfort, unhappiness, anxiety… dukkha, in Buddhist parlance.
Today, I saw an article about GPS and never being lost, and what we may lose by not ever being lost. Turns out, we may be hurting our brains with all that GPS use. I must admit I felt a bit smug because I rarely use GPS. In fact, I hate it in the car2. I’d much rather print out a map and take that with me when going someplace unfamiliar. But most people use GPS and why? We are afraid of getting lost.
Why do we use all the apps (and “smart” devices) we use, every day? I think mostly out of fear…or laziness, or the combo. We’re afraid of not getting enough steps, that we’ll miss a call/text/email, that we’re not maximizing whatever the hell it is that we feel compelled to maximize. We’re afraid of wasting energy or having food go bad if the fridge dies and we don’t know it the second it happens3. Mostly, we’re afraid of failing at anything and everything, in part because these “tools” essentially make us afraid.
I noticed this more with the Ex’ kid–my touchstone of the younger generation. Sure, she’d go hiking or camping or travel to foreign countries, but do any of that without a device? No friggin’ way. Nothing is left to chance in their lives. In a way, she, like so many of her cohort, was walking on eggshells through life.
I think we all do that the more we rely on “smart” devices: live our lives as if walking on eggshells. That is a short route to depression and anxiety. Can’t make a mistake, must be perfect, errors are impermissible… **shudder**. I lived far too long walking on eggshells4; I don’t want to do that now, at all.
So, I stopped wearing the Apple Watch, except for my actual exercise period in the morning (and I’m trying to find a good solution to dump it there, too). I don’t look at a lot of the data it provides, now–just distance and calories, really. I don’t download apps for anything that I can access using a web browser, instead. Is it slower and a bit more difficult? Yup. When I do download apps, they are usually on my iPad, not the phone, so I don’t have them accessible if I’m not at home.
Speaking of home, my appliances do not talk to the internet. I had a string of “smart” lights the Ex had purchased that we had on the wonky arbor. They were programmable and had infinite color choices; they were also buggy and annoying, so when they acted up, again, I threw them out. Instead, I got a very unsmart Ikea string that turns itself on at dusk/off at dawn (via a light sensor) and has just a couple of color choices. Works great.
I recently bought a singing bowl and started using it and a timer5 to meditate. The apps kept demanding more attention (“What’s your meditation goal?” one even asked), which seems particularly wrong for a meditation app. I don’t care that Apple Health doesn’t know my mindfulness stats. I don’t HAVE mindfulness stats.
I find that the more I get rid of these attention-demanding apps and things, the better I feel. This usually means more life-friction, like using a printed map or not having some app with me when I’m out or choosing to stay in hotels and never use an AirBnB when I travel so maybe fewer choices available. However, in exchange I notice that I feel less afraid, overall. My anxiety is much, much lower.
When I backslide and spend too much time online/using apps/tracking/checking, I feel worse6.
Sure, this is just my experience, but it seems to be the same for other folks who make similar changes. The more I read about the science of the “attention economy” the less I want anything to do with it, and others seem to be feeling similarly. Is it age? Perhaps, in part. Whatever, since making these changes I generally feel braver, more at ease, and present. I like it.
- To be sure, there is much about which I disagree with Dr. Crawford (the patriarchy is sometimes quite strong there), but I think he gets it right when he is talking about the difference between humans using tools to do things and things being done by tools (allegedly) for humans. ↩︎
- I do not have it built-in, by the way. My lovely 2014 Miata has no screen, etc. ↩︎
- I was forced to install a “smart” water monitor device to get home insurance and, even though it did actually catch a leak shortly after it was installed (one I would have caught myself, though), I hate it because I now worry about it failing, or working…just another potential problem. ↩︎
- My Ex demanded I not trigger him–which is actually super unhealthy because one needs to learn how to live with triggers, not expect the world to stop producing triggers–anyway, it meant serious eggshell walking. ↩︎
- Yes, the timer on my phone, at least for now; but not a meditation app. ↩︎
- I did that yesterday, actually. It was awful. ↩︎