This weekend I was hanging out with a group of friends and we were talking about the disruptive social effects of SmartPhones. People seem to find those colorful little rectangles so compelling these days that it’s hard to spend time with anybody without continual interruption.
One of my friends took out his phone and showed us his new strategy for cutting down on SmartPhone use. “I’ve switched it to black and white mode,” he explained. “Everything I see on the screen is now shades of gray. So I don’t have the experience of bright colorful images continually luring me to look at the screen.”
He told us that this strategy was very effective. He noticed that since going to black and white, his SmartPhone usage had gone down quite a bit. He still uses it for essential things, but not for random moments of diversion.
That gave me an idea. “Imagine,” I told everyone, “some future phone technology designed to minimize distraction. Unlike today’s phones with their clunky screen display, this future phone would use audio only.”
Everybody stopped to think about this for a moment. Then they burst into laughter.