The phone is addictive because it can never deflect responsibility.
Just once, won’t it say, “No. Why don’t you find your own way to work today. I’ve given you directions every day since you started. I think you should know how by now.”
And the nearby wife chimes in, “You know, she’s right, honey. You’ve been going to work for almost 2 years now. You should know the way. And, I know it makes you nervous, but if you don’t find your way, you can always ask.”
Wouldn’t that be a shock?
That would change the game of the smartphone - if you had to bargain with it to give you directions.
You reply, “Yeah, yeah, you have given me directions, but I, also, haven’t dropped you in a lake yet like I did to my last three phones, so I think you should be a little more appreciative. When I am on my way to work, your job is to give me directions. That was the deal! And so far so good.”
Why not, though? That would create a good exercise in communication.
Even if it still always gave you what you wanted, but put up some grief to get there. Some resistance, requiring a little effort on your part. That would still be better than the “Yes, man” phones we have now.
The phone has no boundaries; thus, there is a mind-meld between it and the user.
We’re not far from such a sassy phone. Apple already installed the app Screen Time to give data to the user to satisfy any guilt they feel from using their phone too much. With that data and a simple “off” setting, like a mother putting a cap on a child’s TV time, users want their phones to say, “No, I won’t turn on because you’ve used your phone too much this week.”
“But, Siri…”
A dialogue between a user and the phone can be healthy. The phone is used so much, and across various human tasks, transcending any single particular purpose, that, if used appropriately, the data collected by the phone could detect the anxieties or the frantic behaviors a user might have. If a user is sad and aimlessly scrolling through Instagram, why doesn’t the phone recommend the user call their friend? Or turn on some good music?
If the user is sad and aimlessly scrolling through the phone, that may be what the user wants, but is it what the user needs? Can a phone make the empathic leap to provide that?
(Alright! And just like that - Instagram speaks through the Sea of Scrolls.)
The phone needs to say, no, do this instead. Like a businessman reaching for the last bagel on the hors d'oeuvres tray at the happy hour. That’s not what he really wants, he’s just redirecting the pains of his social anxieties into a quick carbohydrate-filled alternative. There’s no problem with that, but, the point is, we’re getting to define the causal relationships between people and their behaviors and we can communicate, and design, with that added bit of knowledge.
If the phone were to take on this form, the phone can begin to set boundaries. Left as it is, the phone’s behaviors set a learning cycle like sugar between the phone and the user, that always gives the person what they want.
There’s a monologue with the phone. Everybody gets exactly what they want, yet fail to communicate with the phone object with any dynamicism.
If the phone were simply a tool, it would be no problem. But it has grown into the swiss-army knife tool of tools. It is a single object capable of accomplishing anything from reminding you to pick up your pills from Cousin Jerry’s house, it can direct you to Cousin Jerry’s house, it can play music on the way to Cousin Jerry’s house, it can provide a news report of Cousin Jerry’s neighborhood, it can take photos of Cousin Jerry’s house, it can send an ETA to Cousin Jerry, it can measure the distance from your car door to Cousin Jerry’s front door, it can remind you where you parked at outside Cousin Jerry’s house.
Who would you give that much information to?
We spread out responsibilities among people, to build a network of support. There are friends you can talk politics with and friends you would only mention the weather. There are friends you hang out with for going to have fun and friends you have because they’ll listen. If one of these members leaves or becomes unreliable, the whole system doesn’t fall apart because all your emotional needs weren’t set into a single, social basket.
In this one object, the phone, the human focus is concentrated. The phone is responsible for a lot of things—that gets heavy, like the random person on a bus who just listens while you unload your emotional baggage on them. But at least they have a way out, which they remind themselves repeatedly while you talk with them. The phone has no out. The phone obediently fills its memory. It has even outsourced storage to the clouds, so it can carry all your baggage. It’s reliable and it’s there for you, whether for journaling or supplying an endless feed of cat videos.
This tool is the source, and it is obedient. It can be used to do all these things, but it never tells the user that they never had to go to cousin Jerry’s house in the first place. It just does it, and allows the user to build a world of exemplary meaning to get there.
The phone embodies too many roles. It’s like having many different voices playing in a single head, or a woman who must be businesswoman, mother, wife, daughter, and friend. The phone must play all these different roles, which requires significant discipline by the user to distinguish which tool is for what.
If the phone could communicate better, the roles it plays, like a woman able to adapt to be the Mom her son needs or the Wife her husband needs, it becomes an easier task on the user to understand what she needs from the phone and what she can expect from the phone.
As is, the smart phone does so much on command that it hurts our relationship with it. The phone is a black hole, it absorbs all of a user’s attention without ever giving any pushback. It is a dangerous, powerful, relationship that is only one-way.
People engage with their phones through a constant monologue, but it should be a well-balanced Dialogue.
Other things can be one-way relationships. At least...their existence as objects, and they’re voice as an object don’t necessarily need the full attention as a conversational counterpoint. They’re tools!
It’s reasonable to never need to converse with your fork, coffee mug, pencil, crayon set, toothbrush, or wall mural. A lot of people can behave through life, and get through it fairly easily, without ever listening to what the other has to say. Has the fridge had a lot to say lately? Have the stoplights had a lot to say lately? What’s the earth had to say lately?
Not all things need to be thought about in dialogue. While they can, it requires a lot of mental capacity. Let the fork designers think about the dialogue between person and fork. Let the city think about the pipe systems.
And what is the phone saying?
It’s overused. People rely heavily on it. Either the person needs to start distinguishing why, and for what, they are using their phone, or the phone needs to start recognizing its users’ behaviors and help the user engage with it more responsibly - in a healthy dialogue rather than a dangerous monologue, ending like a Lady Macbeth dream sequence or Anna Karenina talking her way out of existence.