Why should smartphones make us choose between using them too much or not at all?
My colleague David Zax has replaced his iPhone with a so-called “dumbphone.” Novelist and media inventor Robin Sloan did the same thing. Tech columnist Paul Miller is offline for a year and loving it. I kind of envy these people, but at the same time, I can’t help but roll my eyes a bit at such permanent, scorched-earth solutions for the problem of being digitally “overconnected.” Smartphones and the internet aren’t a monolithic scourge to all that’s productive, creative and present in the human condition. If I ditched my iPhone, I’d mindlessly check Gmail a lot less. But I also wouldn’t have been able to create some beautiful nature photos on my early morning walk, which made me feel quite creative and present, thankyouverymuch. What I need isn’t “freedom” from technology, but self control: the ability to choose when and where certain features of my gadgets are appropriate to use, and when they are not.
To read the full, original article click on this link: A Killer App for smartphones: make them emulate dumbphones | MIT Technology Review
