What’s Smart and Dumb About Smartphones?
17th September 2023
Using the smartphone as a point of entry, young people could be inspired to understand that every significant technological breakthrough that has transformed society results from continued human imagination, failure, persistence, courage and, above all else, ambition. Understanding the evolution of the smartphone could, in turn, spark dreams about inventing the future for understanding and changing the world for the better. But praising young people’s apparent technological prowess does the opposite. It encourages complacency and the lowering of ambition.
The result is as depressing as it is inevitable. Instead of a spark for knowledge and a future-oriented aspiration, the smartphone has become a tool of self-reflected indulgence and narcissism. Instead of inspiring young people to raise their eyes from their screens and engage the world around them, we have kindled introspection, a quest for inner identities which fatalistically trap us in the very biology our forefathers overcame with their imaginations.
I have an iPhone SE. Making phone calls is about #45 on the list of the top things I use it for. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I actually made a phone call on it (not to be confused with the last time a spammer tried to call me).