Stop Reading This And Pick Up Your Phone
Noe Gonzales
LOSE YOURSELF TO THE ALGORITHM
It wasn’t until I moved out and became fully responsible for my own existence that I realized how essential media and technology literacy is. Nearly everything I have had to do to establish my life has been primarily online. Need to create a maintenance ticket for your apartment? Don’t worry; all you need is a complete understanding of mobile UI to navigate the horrendous tenant app. Need to manage insurance information quickly? Change your address? Apply for a job? Most of our daily lives demand a technological presence.
While I have no issue with this concept, can you imagine having absolutely no technological literacy at all? You would be living under a rock the size of a football field with little chance of finding your way out. You might even have to call, or worse, physically maintain every essential part of your life. My former neighbor and I, living completely different lives, show just how challenging this would be. I can only imagine how she, at 78, managed to get things fixed in her apartment without making the long trek to the leasing office.
When compared to slick mobile interfaces, though, managing things any other way can be a double-edged sword. On the user end, sometimes it is easier to get something fixed over the phone, but it can also be incredibly inefficient. Waiting in line on the phone to start service with Xcel Energy or update your Bank information can be infuriating. Once the company picks up, the person on the other end of the line makes it easy when they do the work for you, but a lot of times, being able to take care of it by yourself on your phone is far superior. Who needs a Progressive sales rep talking my melting ear off when, with a couple of taps, I can manage a new insurance plan on the app? (Not to mention the ethical issues with underpaid customer service reps in other countries.) But while I don’t need training wheels or anyone to walk me through the process (I can figure out how to change my password on my own, thank you), this isn’t the case for everyone- especially older adults who never adapted to the digital-first world.
“WE PROBABLY WEREN’T MEANT TO SPEND EVERY WAKING MOMENT STARING AT SCREENS“
To be honest, without all the tech surrounding me, I’d feel exposed, like standing naked in the middle of the street. Maybe that reflects how we’ve become consumed by technology— we probably weren’t meant to spend every waking moment staring at screens. But who has time to question it? Every second spent wondering why we shouldn’t be on our phones is another second we could spend on them. So, let the corporate algorithms pull you into a custom-built echo chamber, perfectly tailored to your dopamine receptors and as mind-numbing as Cocomelon.
But what is the alternative? Frankly, I think abstaining from social media and attempting to disengage with the internet is pretentious. No one cares that you haven’t downloaded TikTok; your resistance changes nothing in the grand scheme of things. It’s a lot like sipping juice out of a disgusting paper straw to ‘fight pollution’ while thousands of tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans every day. Sure, you can pretend you’re a hipster who only listens to vinyl records to consume the same stuff everyone else is, but what difference does it make? You can stub your pinky toe in half tripping on a baseboard in the dark with a solar-powered night light, or you can just turn on the big light, burn some fossil fuels, and give in like everyone else.
I don’t know where this is all going; maybe one day, we will have an assigned surveillance camera capturing our every move with our luck, predicting what to advertise to us next. Maybe in the future, it will cost less than $700 every other year. We’re all part of a new technology-driven age, and we’ll have to wait and see what is waiting for us in the future. Our corporate overlords might have full control of us. Do you have a passing thought of hating those hideous Cybertrucks? Guess what; your Tesla-branded brain chip blows up your wrong-thinking head. Or will we stagnate, watching our Jetsons-like future never quite arrive? One way or another, we’re all in this together—bobbing in the currents of a digital world with no real choice but to keep going.
