Why only miles on a plane can tear me away from my phone
Gadgets and screens are starting to rule our lives — which in itself is a twisted sort of luxury
Are you a digital junkie like me, or part of the clean, green digital detox crowd?
I like to think I can walk away from my laptop, mobile or — most critically — internet connection from time to time, but I can’t remember when I last (willingly) did.
Even most long-haul flights now have (free and paid) Wi-Fi options, and if I am feeling too stingy to cough up for those I can just about distract myself with a stream of in-flight movies until I’m connected again, but honestly, it’s hard going.
Because I’m in confession mode, I have to say I am not sure when or how I got this way. I am old enough to have spent most of my childhood disconnected. I remember the dial-up days, and I got my first cellphone in matric
— a hand-me-down Ericsson that could hold about 30 SMSs. And it was still a decade or so before BlackBerry and BBM would transform my daily experience of connected services.
Now the sheer number of gadgets, portals and screens that have crept into my life is disquieting. Also in my arsenal are a DSLR camera, a smart TV, and Apple TV and Netflix (and similar) subscriptions. I get books on my Kindle and have back-up podcasts and audiobooks for when I don’t feel like or can’t read.
I also have a gaming phone. This is, to my shame, something I’ve run with for way too long; I am not a gamer, so this is essentially a Candy Crush phone. It is the closest I get to a “dirty little secret”. My home even has a robo-vacuum, but honestly I can’t complain about that one. It’s the best domestic innovation since dishwashers.
With my phone in hand, I don’t need to have my bearings in a new city Google Maps will do it for me. In a city like Cape Town, I don’t need to worry about cash — even the city parking officials have SnapScan, and the little market vendors do too. Or Zapper. Or a Yoco device.
I don’t need to print my flight ticket, I have it on my phone. I don’t need to remember meeting details, I’ll check them on my calendar when I get there. I don’t need to manage my time, I can always text that I’m running late. Oh, wait. I’m beginning to see the problem.
With endless workarounds and access to an immense pool of knowledge at my fingertips, I should be more organised, not less. But instead of preparing in advance, I sometimes fall into the trap of “get up and go”, relying on tech to bridge the gap.
The technophile in me finds great joy in this we are living in the damn future but sometimes I do worry that my perpetual joke of “outsourcing my brain to my phone” is a little too true for comfort.
I’m also having to admit that the guys who put down their phones and walk away for a weekend or a week (though not before telling us on Facebook) may actually be on to something. All this tech has the same effect on my anxious brain as lemon juice on paper cuts. I get nervy in advance of disconnection. I tried to turn off my WhatsApp read reports once, but switched them back on before the social pest I was avoiding even noticed.
Then again, next to nothing about my life and job is manageable without that connection — as a recent misadventure in Port Elizabeth showed me. For various reasons, I found myself in an unfamiliar city, without any means of navigating or contacting anyone. I know that sounds unlikely — it wasn’t like I was in another country — but, trust me, it happened. And as a result, I got hideously lost and missed my flight. Long story short, I’m writing this column over dreadful airline coffee, significantly out of pocket and counting down the minutes before I get home. Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically, after all.
All of which is an extraordinarily long way of coming round to the point that connectivity is an enabler, and a digital detox — while certainly a very good idea
— is a signifier of great privilege in a country where a usefully sized data bundle is still out of reach of the majority, and where e-commerce is an unimaginable magic for most.
For everyone stressing about economic contraction or poor growth trends, I encourage you to look at how you can bring more people online, as an individual, a professional or corporate citizen. I am not a proponent of trickle-down economics. Trickle-down connectivity, on the other hand … Better yet, open the taps beyond a trickle. Democratise data.