Primitive man in a technological age

Primitive man in a technological age

In the past, I loved my “dumb” phone and as I watched my friends and people in general drown out their phones, get addicted to their small screens, and increasingly neglect the world around them, I began to develop a kind of resentment toward smartphones . Yes, I know that smartphones are not responsible for our collective mental escape from reality ( escaping from reality is a natural reaction sometimes to an unbearable reality ), but when you as a human begin to compete with smartphones to get the attention and interaction of people around you it is hard not to curse that machine small.

Being on the other side of technology - the only person in Dubai who doesn't have a smartphone - made me feel That I'm a caveman, but it also allows me to see things more clearly.

People look at their phones all the time and in all places: in the elevator, in the subway, in the car, at work, in classrooms, and at home. I always find myself wondering, when do you interact with the world and the people near you if you're staring at this screen all the time? Do you have interests and hobbies or has the phone taken over everything in you and every second of your free time?

During social sessions and with friends, I noticed that people are increasingly “disconnecting” from the session to check their phone and interact with it or take a picture and the like, and some of them are so preoccupied with the phone that they become completely absent from the place and the moment completely. As for co-workers, they never leave work, as the burdens of the job are now sitting in their pocket, constantly calling out to them and demanding that their time and attention be fully occupied inside and outside work.

For a caveman like me, watching modern humans is like watching aliens from another planet, I don't understand them and they don't understand me.

Has the smartphone become a necessity?

Recently, it has become very difficult in Dubai to communicate with people without smartphone applications; When someone sends me an address, they send it on a map that my stupid phone can't read, and when I'm looking for a car or even a maintenance worker, everyone asks me to communicate with them via WhatsApp, which my phone can't operate. Some restaurants are expecting me to use their mobile app to order food, and even my gym sends exercise programs on the phone via a file that my stupid phone can't understand.

The funny thing is that there was a girl I met recently who thought I was secretly married and used the stupid phone to hide my cheating on my wife. Even today, I guess she still doesn't really understand why I'm not available on WhatsApp and social networks, and why I'm not available for long email chats most days. I also noticed that she was not alone, many of the female friends I happened to talk to about this said that it really is easier for them to believe that I am a husband who is cheating on his wife than to believe that I do not have a smartphone.

I'm not saying that a smartphone became a necessity because I wanted to have interesting nighttime conversations with the glamorous receptionist at the gym (well that might be one of the reasons), but the real problem started when the phone became a kind of necessity in my line of work. My field, paradoxically, is digital content, which is quite technological and every worker in the field has a large personal arsenal of phones and digital gadgets. My job is to develop and present electronic content through various means, and I cannot do this if I do not know the prevailing electronic content and its various applications, and most of it is made for the phone and consumed over the phone. In addition, there are many meetings and activities in the company that are coordinated through exclusive mobile applications.

Lately, I've been missing some important meetings and messages because I don't have a smartphone. Most of those around me, especially at the managerial levels, did not believe that not having a smartphone was a personal choice, they thought it was a refusal to work and its responsibilities, and even a colleague offered to lend me some money to buy a phone because he thought the problem was financial.

This technological reality put me in front of two options: either keep my stupid phone and risk my career, or buy a smartphone. Since I am not a millionaire and currently need a job, having a smartphone was the easiest solution.

This could be the biggest mistake of this year

Since I have a smartphone, I can understand why this little piece of magic charms millions of people with its magical spell. It facilitates communication in an unprecedented way and provides daily dozens of useful applications in work, entertainment and all areas of life.

Yet what makes the smartphone such a magical machine is exactly what makes me critical of it: people rely on their phone to laugh, entertain themselves, communicate with others, save their personal information, regulate their sleep, choose their food, and just about everything else. I am not exaggerating in saying that I have personally seen a huge number of adult men and women who cannot work, live or organize their lives without their phones. I've seen people break down emotionally when their smartphone goes missing or get depressed when the battery runs out, and that doesn't surprise me, they've given them so much power over their lives that they act like kids who lose their parents when they lose their phone. What human beings would we be if we did not know how to live without an electronic part in our hand all the time?

In addition, it seems that the people of the smartphone do not sleep or rest, and it is always available on the Internet all days of the week throughout the year. This people does not believe that there are people who sleep and rest and may spend a lot of time without an Internet connection (the horror!). Some smartphone addicts expect that you are always available to answer their messages wherever you are and at any time, or they will resent you.

A smartphone is also anti-writing because it is a device designed to constantly intrude on you and prevent you from thinking calmly. I do not encounter this problem personally because I do not activate the Internet on the phone for long times, and I only put the necessary applications on it. The thing is that I feel that I have to impose calm and “isolation” by turning off the internet and the like after these things were coming naturally. In addition, turning off the Internet on the phone also exposes you to accountability by everyone, family, friends and that girl who thought I was married and needed one more thing to prove it.

Were you defeated as a caveman?

I am sure that many friends and readers think that my objection to smartphones and my criticism of modern technology is completely useless and I am sure it seems a ridiculous position to the majority of mainstream society. The anti-technology stance will not affect the frantic running of the machine nor stop technological progress, and it makes me sound like the primitives and old people who in the past objected to such things as radio, television, and computers. Nevertheless, the current course of events convinces me more than ever of the need to disengage from our dependence on industrial technology.

As we know, current technology is linked to abundant energy and an unfair economic structure, and while the era of cheap energy is ending , the era of complex technology is also coming to an end with it. So, as we wait for the day when our smartphone screens turn off and never come back to life, preparing ourselves to live with the world without technology becomes the difference between life and death.

What we mean is that we must acquire the skills that build our independence and resilience in a world where electricity and smartphones may be a thing of the past; We need to know how to grow our own food, build our societies with our own hands, interact with our loved ones, and organize our lives without needing a machine to do it for us. We have to disengage from the system .

I am afraid that the young people who are now growing up completely dependent on their smartphone to organize their lives will not be ready and qualified to deal with the world of tomorrow - not because there will be technology more advanced than the smartphone but quite the opposite. As political conflicts rage, national economies collapse and country after country enters the age of darkness, who do you think will be more adaptable to the new world, the modern person who uses a smartphone to organize his meals and whose skills are posting on Facebook, or the caveman who knows how to build, grow and fight?