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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  4493 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: IPhone and the Invisible Tether

    Well, that about wraps up my reflections for the moment. Anyone else want to share? What’s the climate of your relationship with your smartphone? And do you ever get the eerie feeling that it’s working against you?

I recently made a deal with my wife that I would stop checking my e-mail so often during the day. I was literally checking my email once every 10-20 minutes. Why? When you're around someone else and doing this, you are essentially telling them that your email is more important to you than they are and well.... that's just not cool.

So far, so good.

I will say that I read your piece from my phone.

I like the photo you use for the piece, did you put that together?





cW  ·  4492 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Indeed I did. That is a couple'a faces of my very own iPhone, fragmented differently.

So perfect you read it on your phone! And that's the truly beautiful thing about the Thing: it really does bring us so much (as, for example, my own bit of techno-farce). The important (and increasingly difficult) thing is to make sure it's bringing us what we want. Every time we pick it up, we are essentially advertising to ourselves. For whom? Well, I think, for Advertising, writ large. The very thing itself. i.e., anyone who is open for business and up for paying the cost of access.

I like what Baudrillard (apparently) said: "We can no longer tell the difference between real and imaginary needs." Nothing illustrates this better than the iPhone, and its set of intensely personal dilemma.

Cheers to your armistice on refexive iPhone access, and long live your biologically driven communications!