The flip phone manifesto | David Amadio | TEDxLincolnUniversity

My name is David Amedeo and I am a university professor, a job that I love very much. I have been teaching for over two decades and my greatest joy still comes from interacting with students over the past few years, although I have noticed something. It's disturbing their behavior these days, when I walk into a classroom full of students, I'm not greeted with a hello or a good morning, not even a pair of bright, welcoming eyes. Most often, I encounter silence in that pre-symbolic environment. A moment before teaching begins, my students are not talking to me or each other, so they are all staring at their smart

phone

s with glassy eyes and expressionless faces.

They usually don't come out of this trance until later. I told them to put away their

phone

s, which they do with the reluctance of someone about to rip off a Band-Aid. Now, in addition to being a teacher, I am also a husband and father, as much as I love being with my wife. and two boys over the last few years I've noticed something disturbing about their behavior these days when I walk into the living room after a long day at work I'm not met with a hello dad or how was your day or even a bright set of welcoming eyes more often what I found is silence my wife my daughter my son everyone is looking at their devices and no one is looking at me, it creates the feeling of observing them behind a two-sided mirror as if I am a behavioral psychologist and they are my test subjects.

I sit on the couch. I put my hands on my knees and wait for my family to talk to me. Either I'm the most ignored man in America or something is seriously wrong. Here now, when I complain about what the culture of constant distraction is doing to the fabric of human society, those who have not left the room tell me that this is the future, this is technological advancement, this is progress, well, let me tell you what the poet EE Cummings had to say about progress. Progress said that it is a comfortable illness that we do not know we suffer from because it feels very good to be sick.

Now in 2018, The Guardian Simon Parkin reported that app and social media designers use persuasive technology to develop habitual behavior and smartphone users by rewarding them for repeating the same actions over and over now, when you post a photo on Instagram, it is you may not see that you know any likes the first four times you check it, it's not because unpopular, you're very popular, um, it's because the Instagram algorithm follows a variable rewards program. The wait comes, perhaps, until the fifth or sixth time you check your post to receive the likes you've been secretly saving. Now slot machines work on a similar system. and the brain chemical that is released every time the player pulls the lever is the same brain chemical that is released every time you check your phone and it is dopamine, the miraculous happiness-giver that stimulates your pleasure.

Center with text messages, notifications, videos, games, that smartphone is a drug dealer in the palm of your hand and you are quickly becoming addicted to what the candy man is pumping you have contracted a comfortable but not incurable disease digital age addicts I have found your methadone for those of you who have never seen one of these before it was a

flip

phone it's my

flip

phone now reactions tend to vary when I bring out old Flip Wilson some people in the crowd may know who Flip Wilson actually is some people don't believe he's real so I have to show you in a quick demo that this phone is actually not a toy.

Some people get very angry with me and demand that I drive to the nearest Apple store and update immediately. Other people just pity me like they would. a stray puppy last fall a tender-hearted student offered to raise money on my behalf so that I could finally, after all these years, buy a smartphone now, whether you know it, disbelief, resentment, compassion, these responses instinctive that rarely allow people to carry their thinking beyond the visible. You know that for them my flip phone will always be an object of fun, but for me it represents a philosophy deeply rooted in who I am, what I believe, how I think and feel.

You know, because I refuse to update. People have accused me of being a Luddite, a curmudgeon, a nostalgia sucker, but I'm none of those things. What I am is a time traveler, and I come from 2006, the year before the iPhone first hit the market. and I bring with me a message of hope for those of you who fear a future in which our species has evolved into a technician with bulging eyes, extremely large thumbs and a neck permanently bent forward, join me in declaring that the principles from

manifesto

number one of folding phones they defend the imagination in now everything costs the imagination according to the writer John Dufresne it is the faculty that allows us to dream fantasize remember to see right here in front of our eyes what is not actually present now in the commercials of television, smartphones are often advertised as facilitators of imagination.

We see them used to paint pictures and record music, design plans, film movies, but in reality the smartphone tends to impede imagination rather than encourage it, erecting a wall between our inner and outer life, how are we supposed to imagine something ourselves if we usually are? consuming the products of someone else's imagination and how we are supposed to see what is not actually present if we are continually staring at a screen that never goes away, we are clearly not expected to do these things and this casts serious doubts on the future of creativity now since I have had this phone and I have only had it since 2016 before I didn't even have this since I had it it has never tried to hijack my fantasy never Tried to wake me up from the dream of creativity.

Understand as I do that imagination is the most important faculty we possess, it is what separates us from the beasts and any threat to it must be considered a threat to our essential humanity if imagination is sufficient. to survive this current barrage of non-stop interruptions then someone is going to have to stand up and defend it someone is going to have to freak out I don't mind being that someone, but I do care about being the only one, it's a pretty lonely number to make the default setting a reality I now consider myself a resident of reality who take occasional trips to cyberspace, while a large majority of smartphone users are residents of cyberspace who take occasional trips to reality observing this latter phenomenon in my own children.

I often wonder why reality becomes such a bad rep, it's as if the very act of being has become a joke or, worse yet, a red flag. We see someone sitting in contemplative silence on a park bench and consider her behavior suspicious. We say, look at that man, honey, he's just looking at the trees. I know, I know he's probably up to something terrible, yeah, call the police, we could all be in danger, yeah, but when the cops show up to arrest this weirdo, they don't find a gun in his coat pocket, do they? what do they find?, they find a foldable phone and they stand there scratching their heads wondering who is this not yet Apple that he, like me, has chosen to make the default configuration a reality, we take life as it comes, we drink it all what it has to offer from the average to the amazing, from the mundane to the wonderful, we are happy with our garden and it is the foldable phone that makes it possible, it does not want to distance us from reality, it stays on the margins to that we can occupy the center, yes, the center. staying in the center instead of giving us or instead of taking us out of the received world returns us to the received world where we should all spend most of our days number three living life at a natural pace now self-control the ability to control one's actions and desires is a trait that many of us aspire to now, when you invite a smartphone into your life, you hand over some of that control, you give the Machine permission to direct and modify your behavior, connectivity is very good now. but we are not meant to be everywhere at once we are not meant to be everyone to everyone every moment of the day at some point you have to come back to yourself at some point you have to come back to the natural rhythms of the brain and body now because my flip phone doesn't have a competitive agenda because my flip phone doesn't have any agenda I can live my life in tune with these rhythms now some people say am are you slow?

I would say I'm saying, okay, ah, what I'm saying is that I may not seem as busy as everyone else, but when I set out to accomplish a task, I accomplish it completely monogamously. ok, I work at a pace that only I have set and only I have the power to do. changing the start and stop tempo dictated by the smartphone as always and has always seemed inherently manic to me, now I drive myself crazy just watching people divert their attention from left to right worrying if they know if we're using something they're never going to do. get it back and ask yourself if you know they care that it's gone to number four.

Getting your dopamine in the wrong place, so face-to-face encounters, whether on purpose or by accident, renew our membership in the human community. You know, we meet someone for the first time we get to know a casual acquaintance better, we have a long conversation with an old friend, we walk away from these experiences feeling part of something bigger, now it's much easier to post a photo of yourself on the social networks. than talking to a stranger at Staples, but the dopamine release you get from meeting in person is much more stimulating than what you get from your phone.

I know I talked to a stranger at Staples not long ago What started as a simple conversation about binders turned into a spontaneous exchange with a nice woman named Jane. Now the social boost I received from that conversation was enough to last me the rest of the week, maybe even the rest of the month. You see, dopamine is enough. It's not bad when you're not chasing it all the time, when it's real, when it's random, the effect will be pure and stay with you, but that may never happen, maybe you'll never become a real social being, maybe you'll never do it. . learn what it means to be fully human if you continue to choose the world that wants to be over the world that is number five, fifth and last, stop conjuring false spectacles now, before the advent of the smartphone, we determine the value of a personal experience .

In measuring its impact on our individual growth and development, now that social media plays such an important role in our lives, we measure the value of a personal experience not in terms of its transformative potential, but in the degree to which it can be recorded, share, publish. This affects not only how we judge an experience but also how we carry it out, how we have it, so to speak, even the most amateur smartphone user is a great illusionist who conjures up false spectacles by turning insignificant moments into photographs and pseudo-events one of my students recently told me: "I will do it." I don't think I know how to have an experience and I told him "you do know how to have an experience", but since you are addicted to watching other people's fake shows, you are afraid that your experiences won't be as entertaining or two.

You are so amused by their supposed experiences that you would rather continue watching them than go out and have your own, whatever the reason, the result is paralysis. I am now happy to report that I am not suffering. By the same paralysis I am an active producer of my own authentic experiences rather than a passive consumer of other people's increasingly artificial ones. I own a device that does not help me create, transmit, validate or define my experiences and after having had them I feel there is no pressure to instantly convert them into something consumable, it is up to me to determine their value and it may be years before I understand what what they really mean, but I welcome that burden and you should too, even if it means waiting to share an experience until later. you yourself have light you yourself have loved yourself you have commented so these are the five principles of the foldable phone

manifesto

now mm-hmm written by someone who doesn't own a smartphone and will probably never hear me say that you have to assume that I hate phones You smart people probably think that if you and I talk after the event I'm going to smash yours with a hammer that I keep in my back pocket just for that occasion.

No, that's not the truth. I don't hate smartphones, I just passionately dislike what we've allowed them to do to us. The point of me being here is not to accuse you of anything or make you feel bad or vilify your technology. I am here to bring your attention to a topic that I believe is not relevant. lessimportant than climate change no less important than the degradation of our physical environment like the black rhinoceros imagination is an endangered species like the rainforests of Borneo reality is shrinking at an alarming rate and just like the great shelf of ice society is fracturing and it is still small I fear irreversible forms, if you want to save these things, if you want to reduce the size of your digital footprint, then get out of your Cadillac Escalade and get into my electric car.

It may not do much for your image, but it can do wonders for your consciousness. Honestly, I don't think anyone is going to walk out of here today and trade in their smartphone for a flip phone. I'm even willing to admit that my manifesto is absurd, most good manifestos are, but I still have a vision for the future. I anticipate a moment. when people move away from the Internet, when they wake up as if from a long bad dream and open their eyes to the world that I have been preparing for them and when this happens, they will no longer be the ones who remain in disbelief before me, they will no longer be the ones.

Those who will feel sorry for me will be the ones who will break the silence of those lonely rooms, they will be the ones who will look up and say: I'll turn around, I'm here, thank you.