Technology selectivity
We have to be selective in our technology use to not get overwhelmed.
The technology cadence was quite simple before the 2000’s. Whenever there was a new big invention like the personal computer or the mobile phone, everyone started of being skeptical and then just slowly embraced it and integrated it in their daily lives. When Frans Bromet asked Dutch people in 1998 if they needed a mobile phone, most people responded that they don’t need to be called while they’re away from home 1. Within 10 years almost everyone had a mobile phone 2. How quickly times can change.
I think innovation was always hardware bound to a certain degree. Faster hardware made running new innovations possible. This, in combination with the widespread adoption of the internet allowed for some great innovations. When Google Earth was introduced in 2005, aside from the obvious active internet connection, it required quite a decent PC setup to run 3. Accordingly, this new innovation was not available to everyone at this time.
In recent years this is no longer the case. Almost everyone owns a smartphone and even the most basic smartphones allow all kinds of apps to be used. They all have sufficient computational power, internet access, and other functionalities like GPS. This means the innovations are no longer hardware bound. If some social media becomes popular, you get access to it immediately. And this is exacerbated with much of the computational power moving to the cloud, which allows things like GenAI to run on every device.
I’m a millenial and I grew up with the internet. I used to be an early adopter of many new innovations that came out. I joined different kinds of social media, played online games, used different instant messaging tools, etc. But in the beginning this was always confined to the computer. When you would walk away from the computer, that world closed and there was only real-life to deal with. The smartphone changed things. The smartphone enabled us to be always online. Whatever we could do online on the computer before, we could now do on the go. Initially this was great! I could now reply to emails, send messages to others without paying for SMS, use maps when I was lost somewhere. However, after a while it started bothering me. There were so many different notifications from all kinds of different apps, I was in quite a few group chats that never seemed to stop, and every time I had a few minutes of rest I would browse Reddit or different kinds of social media. It was just too much.
At that point I wanted to move to a “dumb phone”. I felt stressed by being connected all the time and wanted to move back to the old days. I figured people could just call me when they needed me and the things I needed to do online I could just do on the computer again, like I was used to doing. But when I really started considering this switch I felt like this was not a realistic option. What if I needed to pay for a gift at work? What if I needed to find my way somewhere? What if I wanted to take a picture? It occured to me that I would need to make some choices here.
Then I found my solution. I need to be selective with my technology usage. No more notifications from everything, no more unused social media, no more Reddit whenever I had some spare time. I deleted all my social media and removed all unessential apps from my phone. It was right around this time that I read the wonderful book “Deep work”4, in which Cal Newport describes ways in which different people block out distractions from their life. For me these were the notifications on my phone. I still need the notifications when I receive new messages, but I don’t want to get disturbed by them. Then I found the Focus Mode (or Do not Disturb) mode that every phone has. I set it up to only make sounds when I get a phonecall, which allows me to check other notifications whenever I feel like it. Sure, this does mean it can take a few hours for me to see messages, but people around me have gotten used to that. And I’m happy to say that I haven’t felt that stress since.