The following post is authored by Opposing Points’ new columnist, Mr. Monopoly. I do hope you enjoy his writing and look forward to more from him in the future to consider.
Think of anyone from pre-2004. Anybody in the entire world. Someone you know. Someone famous. An athlete. Politician. Singer. Server at your favorite restaurant. Anyone.
Imagine they hop on a time traveling plane from their era to this very moment, and then imagine you have to pick them up from the airport. You're there in departures in the line of cars, and in comes this person. For this exercise I've selected the 1998 version of my Uncle, but again you can pick anyone you like. I think I've made that clear. Your crazy uncle is just more fun at the dinner table.
So my Uncle gets in the car, and looks around while introducing himself. As he takes in this new futuristic vehicle while I begin driving away, something shocks him. A black brick plugged into the car pulls up a map and starts telling me exactly where to go, for how long, and exactly what traffic we'll encounter on the way (and any speed traps).
It doesn't matter whom from the past you put in there - that iPhone is going to stand out more than any of the car's tech or my stylish 2021 Target brand clothing. We are only 14 years into the existence of the iPhone, and yet it has become ubiquitous in our lives. Realistically, it only took a year or so for it to reach that status, but now its gobbling up more hours than ever (1 more per day since COVID began according to recent research).
Do you know that metaphor about boiling a frog? Where the frog will be boiled alive and not even know it if you rise the temperature slowly, but will hop out of the pot if you rise the temperature too fast? Well we're frog 1. My Uncle is frog 2
As he looks around at this future throughout the day, frog 2 will realize that everyone around is a frog 1 and has a device just like my iPhone. He'll see people crossing the street with their heads in a phone, people having conversations while staring into their own individual screens and interacting with them.
My Uncle's a big tech guy, so he will wonder who makes these phones. He'll learn it’s Apple, or Google, or Samsung. All companies that he knows from his time, but they certainly were not ubiquitous in his life. He’ll wonder whatever happened to Blackberry. Loves the Apple store though.
What he's seeing is a phenomenon that has gone largely ignored in our national media, for quite obvious reasons I might add. We spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes per day on these phones. Given that my 1998 Uncle spends 0 hours and 0 minutes per day on an iPhone, this would be a pretty incredible sight. Nothing would be more important to him - he'd want to know how the whole thing works. And he'd find that we take them to bed with us. We take them to the bathroom with us. To work and to dinner. To parks, to movies, on dates....lots of places. It’s gotten to the point where CNN has guides on how to function with your phone addiction (not quite how they phrase it).
Again, my Uncle is a big tech guy. Loves tech. Loves it. So he'll keep thinking about this, and wonder what we're looking at on these phones. And he'll discover apps. Each from a different company which can place them right in front of your face, and each with things you can pay for. A marketplace in your pocket, with many companies he does know and some with sleek yet cartoonish logos he's never seen. They show us videos, let us connect with our friends, and look up any bit of information we'd like.
And he'll notice it’s not just phones - it’s SmartTVs, tablets, and even Virtual Reality headsets. All sold to the people of the world by innovative tech companies, who he'll see are currently all the top stocks in the stock market. And he's a pretty conservative and private guy, so I think he'll crap himself when he sees the Alexa in my living room (I don't actually have one, but for the metaphor, let’s pretend) listening to every word I say and making suggestions.
Whoever you thought of at the top of the article, imagine them in this scenario. The most famous person in the world, the smartest, the dumbest - they would all naturally be in awe of these devices we carry around. And yet here we are, 3.5 hours per day for the average person spent staring at the little screen often without a second thought. Get a notification you like, and suddenly you’re in your next rabbit hole.
So what exactly is coming through this screen and into our heads? Well, most of the time, whatever you're seeing is designed in some form or fashion to acquire your money and discern your interests. The various apps on your phone are in a constant battle to acquire your attention, a window into the everyday lives of the consumer which companies from the dawn of time would have bent over backwards to have.
We don't think of them like that. We think of them as fun helpers that we interact with to do things we like. Which is true, and us interacting with our tech does not make us dumb or weak. What it does do to us, however, is make us stupid and keep us from using the best parts of our brains.
It turns off our survival instincts. It paints a picture of the world which is presented through devices designed to get you to spend money. So no matter what subject is being discussed, and no matter the intent, it will be shown to you by an entity that's designed to make money off of you and the various demographics to which you belong.
We do not question why we walk around with these devices. A lot goes into that. The existence of the data economy can only continue if we don't consider that we always have the option to not use our phone. To actually put it down for days and not look at it. We still do have that option. But now many of us use big tech created products at work. For fucks sake, I'm writing this letter of dissent on a Chromebook. I’d nail it to the door like Martin Luther but my warranty doesn’t cover it.
In my opinion it’s not really worth taking the position that you should abstain from participating in the data economy. After all, it runs our world and is showing no signs of slowing down. And it gives you the power to be so damn productive personally using free tools, which is great. However, I implore you to consider what it’s doing to us. And to you. To your loved ones.
What I want to cover next is what this tech is doing to our ability to think about critical issues and our future. I contend that our views into who truly calls the shots in our nation have obscured, with true power pulling the strings via this tech-based illusion that keeps us all happy and compliant while our future is mortgaged by high finance.
The stockholders of media organizations pressure them to feed us nonsense (look - racist celebrity! Look - cute animal!) and put these things on news networks and social media apps rather than any coherent analysis on what the fuck has been going on in 2016 - 2021 America. Because if we weren't being artificially separated from the truth by vast and complex systems that use our phones as devices to act as a Trojan Horse to warp minds, our people would see just how unjust this society is and would seek out a very different national dialogue than the one we are forced to deal with now.
Will get into all of that next time. Thank you to anyone who read, it means the world. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Sincerely,
Mr. Monopoly
Sources:
1) https://elitecontentmarketer.com/screen-time-statistics/#:~:text=A%20study%20of%2011k%20RescueTime,minutes%20on%20their%20mobile%20devices.
2) https://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/did-americans-spend-too-much-time-on-our-phones-in-2020.html
3) https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/360320
4) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/steve-jobs-debuts-the-iphone
Thanks Lee! More to come from Mr. Monopoly. Stay tuned!
Another brilliantly well written article and a very interesting way of making the reader delve back into the past and bring someone they know to 2021. Was very amusing but also a shocking reminder how fast technology has/is evolving. 10/10