As IF Times

This piece is inspired by a podcast to which I subscribe, entitled; Inner French.  The topic was the extent to which people have become unwittingly enslaved by the many electronic devices available in modern society. Specifically, this podcaster, Hugo Cotton, discusses the degree to which his daily activities became obsessively tied to the tabulations put out by his exercise watch.

While ostensibly, the watch was just an appendage to show time and distance travelled on his jogging runs, the other aspects of his life also monitored by the watch began to create a need in his mind to attain prescribed targets of things such as sleep duration and quality. In essence, he realized that this obsession with reaching targets prescribed by the watch were having adverse effects on his life and thus, he stopped wearing it except for the jogging runs.

I found this to be an interesting observation as this phenomenon has enslaved an entire world by linking their lives to electronic devices.  Of course, we’re not talking about basic smartphones per se; everyone in the world has one and that device is indelibly linked to each person’s lives and personality.  But phones are not just about basic communication as we all know.

What is more troubling is that people have fallen into the trance conveyed primarily by their phones on how to live their lives in general.

In the not too distant past, if people saw something on television or read something in a newspaper, it was deemed to be true, thus those platforms had enormous impact on people.  Clearly those who controlled those outlets would have significant leverage on any given society.  Cellphones, or more specifically, apps on smartphones have mostly taken over the role of TV and newspapers.  Instagram and Facebook are the modern equivalent of unimpeachable sources.

For some reason, there are endless tips and sage advice on how to ‘better’ one’s life or to more effectively perform some mundane task such as frying an egg or tying a shoe. Apparently we’ve been doing it wrong for centuries. There are targets given for physical competence, for cognitive ability or for raising your dogs and children.  We are given advice on the best foods to eat, at what time of the day to eat them, the subtleties of olive oil and the best things to buy at Costco.

We are measured against some mythical statistics on longevity and are given advice on how to attain such immortality by consuming the right amount of kale or by walking 8000 steps per day and drinking organic coconut water. Often this advice is given by 20 something year old ‘influencers’ with acne who’ve just graduated from high school (or not).  Not only that, but apps are always available to measure the targets of such an idealized life. As noted in Hugh Cotton’s experience, people fuss over reaching statistical targets arbitrarily set by ‘experts’.

And people believe it.  They believe the advice on how to get wealthy simply by leveraging themselves in real estate or to put it all into Crypto currencies. People become stressed when they compare the ‘progress’ in their lives versus those depicted on social media platforms. It is never good enough. Invariably, people will find famous people who will espouse sentiments favorable to their own and thus the modern phenomenon of ‘following’ people becomes the norm. Admit it or not, the phenomenon of hanging on to every word of powerful influencers is as additive as any drug.

With great irony, the proliferation of ‘information’ on so many levels creates more stress in people than the liberating health benefits that these devices purport to provide.  There are unrealistic expectations created to which people cannot achieve, thus fostering people’s natural insecurities. Think of the business model of Peloton, the stationary virtual bike machine in which you are on a leaderboard against other cyclists.   Think ab0ut Duolingo, a language learning app in which you are on a leaderboard with other learners.  While it can be argued that these are just effective tools,  in practice, people can become handcuffed to their own unrealistic expectations and perceived inadequacies and in fact may bring out obsessive behaviors.   By their own hand, people have increasingly and unknowingly chained themselves to their electronic devices.

It’s worthwhile to remember that not all ‘statistically’ derived advice is valid. Some of us will remember that in the 1960’s, 4 out of 5 doctors recommended a certain brand of cigarette. And we must not forget the famous phrase attributed to Mark Twain: “…there are lies, damned lies and statistics…”

Source: You can use Alexa to send SMS messages now, if you’ve also got an Android phone – The Verge

It all started with the TV remote.  When the television was first invented, it represented a significant milestone in the way that people consumed their entertainment.  It quickly supplanted all other forms of household amusement to be the premier mode of distraction for the modern home. Television obviated the need to read books which required the onerous and repetitive task of turning pages.  It also put aside the need for people to think, but that’s a topic for another discussion.  When someone invented the TV remote, the appearance of the couch potato soon followed.  Now it was no longer necessary to travel the 6 or 8 feet to turn the channel; all that was required were  hands with opposable thumbs.

Fast forward some 70 years to our modern time and we find that there is a never ending wave of inventions, discoveries and ideas to make our lives ‘easier’, more ‘efficient’ and just generally better.  Some are admittedly ingenious, such as the vacuum cleaner, flush toilets and of course, rolled toilet paper. However there have been  many inventions that are frankly in search of a need, such as flavored diet coke, the X games and of course, selfies.

After TV, the smartphone has had the most significant effect on society.  The proliferation of smart phones has impacted the human experience in two visible ways, both having to do with expectations.  The first is by creating a society where expectations and comparisons are foisted upon people by their inclusion (or not) in social cliques; with people they don’t even know, by virtue of social networking.  The second is by creating the illusion of convenience via all kinds of phone apps.  As we know, there are apps for most anything ranging from the very useful, such as your horoscope,  to the truly picayune, such as other people’s horoscopes.

But it’s not just phone apps.  On a regular basis, there’s revelation of some new invention that truly pushes the horizons of human laziness.  Think of the trend for self driving cars for instance; as if taxis didn’t already exist.  Think of Tinder; people are too lazy to go out to meet someone; they just move their finger on a screen like ordering a pizza.  There are apps connected to services that send entire meals to your house for those too ‘busy’ to cook.  As if anyone’s that busy or important.

One of the most popular gifts during the recent Christmas season were those devices such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa that aspire to be the home’s  information and control center.  These machines allow users to call things up on demand just by issuing commands from across the room.  As per the linked article, these things are even able to send text messages for you, eliminating the need to actually move your hands to fiddle with a phone.  With ongoing inventions, man is evolving from a couch potato to a mashed couch potato.  We’ll put a twist on that famous quote attributed to H.L. Mencken about the gullibility of the American public by re-stating as, “nobody ever went broke betting on the laziness of the American public”.  I’m not convinced man is moving forward if flicking fingers is the prime social skill.