It was a lazy afternoon, my iPhone 12 ran out of battery. At the first second, I was panicking.
What if someone calls me?
I may miss a lot of texts.
What if there is something urgent?
….
Thoughts like these went round and round in my head. A calm came back to me the moment I restarted my phone again. I immediately stood up and scared through my entire mail list and discovered there was no call, no texts, no likes and shares on Facebook in the last 10 minutes. Then I started to ask myself if I was too obsessed with smartphones.
I checked the usage, and it suggested that the average daily usage last week was 5 hours. Which is absolutely too much by my standard. A plan then naturally came into my brain. I needed to do something to end this “Tech Addiction”. As long as I went back home, I started digging into my old devices. Then I found something I used to love, Nokia 3310. Before the age of smartphones, Nikia 3310 was a good phone which I used for almost 10 years. It does the basics, it takes calls, and text messages and that’s all. Nothing more and nothing less, just right for me.
I was surprised by its battery life lasted around 2 days of time. Phones today? Impossible.
In the beginning, I was anxious and afraid of losing contacts on email and other social media platforms. It turned out alright, when I got to work, I could access them on my pc. I started to realize there are not so many important contacts virtually. When there is, they would try to reach me in other ways.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket on the bus still happens a lot, just like every other day and every other person. I am still very much used to a smartphone. When it came to payment, ApplePay just could not get out of my head. It was so fast and convenient, all I have to do is to tap the Pos machine. It was no longer available, so I took out my wallet and searched for changes. It was, I have to admit, quite painful. Probably I should take my credit card out and tap them on the Pos Machine.
However, the real pain was not when I got the change. Sometimes, they didn’t have the change.
When walking on the street, my attention would be attracted by things happening around me instead of the wave of the data stream. I started to check the details of bricks, cracks on concrete, and incoming people’s facial expressions. As someone much older than smartphones, it came naturally to me. The smell of the street was never so vivid, it sneaked into my nostrils without notice. I went to a bookshop to check out the news and books, but I just couldn’t put that much effort into reading an actual book.
At the end of the day, it was alright. I didn’t feel uncomfortable using cash or reading papers. They were there, as they always have been. I believe it is still a choice to live in a low-tech way. It makes your sensations stronger. However, it is foreseeable that living with less tech will be more difficult in the future since more of our infrastructure was moved online.
