The Smartphone’s Challenge to Radical Humanity

Rethinking the future of smartphones on the playa and beyond

The Burning Man Organization and a group of us who happened across each other last summer, worked together to create this piece, coinciding with the rise of smartphones & social media at the event.

By nature of its location, Burning Man was a cell service dead-zone for a long time, an oasis from the constant connectedness of the digital age. Over the past two years that’s changed, and the depths at which cell service has influenced behavior on the playa has been quite noticeable.

When something like smartphones is introduced into an environment, something that provides so much convenience, it can be easy to forget what is lost. Technology is a trade, and sometimes it’s hard to recognize or understand what we’re trading when we adopt it. For example, the introduction of texting is not as simple as “now I can send messages to people.” It’s also the introduction of being reachable, a change in social norms, the fact that in any sort of challenging or awkward moment rather than needing to adapt to the situation we’re in, we’ll always have a quick escape to the safety of the device. Is texting worth that trade for you? Worth giving up the need to surrender to the serendipity of the playa for the convenience of messaging someone? It might be, and it might not, but we rarely think about the full picture.

We’ve also seen the way social media has changed the way people socialize, and attend events in general. If we could do it all over again (and here we can!) is this something we’d intentionally choose?

This is just one of many potential examples of the intricate and nuanced ways that smartphones and social media alter our experiences and our lives. Burning Man has built such a beautiful culture upon values, and I hope it can be a place where technology is used to support those values, rather than lure us away from them, lure us away from presence, and lure us away from ourselves.

Watch This Video

“Move Slow And Cherish” Transcript:

Technology can be a bicycle for the mind.
A tool to help humanity become the best it can be
And frankly…that sounds lovely.

But somewhere along the way we seemed to underestimate
The ease at which machines could switch on and off our reptile brains…
That what we built could actually manipulate
Our minds desires and society
The fabric of this world we’ve made

That these little screens could overtake
The life that they’re supposedly “capturing”.

We shouldn’t throw it all away…
There’s so much value that they bring
Technology is human ingenuity
Its magic practically
But somewhere along the line
We let these systems rearrange
The way we value everything.

This place was founded upon values.

But like so much of society,

pointing technology
at these…
is more complicated than it seems.

If we create an algorithm that gets the perfect gift for everybody,
that at first sounds amazing…but would miss the point completely.
It would lose all the magic that comes from people gifting
The thoughtfulness the serendipity and the effort that we put in.

If robots cleaned the playa we wouldn’t have to pick up anything…
But we’d miss the lived experience of caring for the space we’re in
We’d miss the lesson the intention the reason for its creation.

Sometimes the answer isn’t the answer
Sometimes questions are the answer and sometimes getting lost is the only way to find our way.

Whats the point of all this innovation if we sacrifice the things that make live worth living?
If we sacrifice meaning in pursuit of efficiency?
If we isolate ourselves in search of connectedness?
If we lose our “why?” in pursuit of success?
If we become mindless in our pursuit of progress?

Life happens fast and is over in an instant.
Technology happens faster and if we don’t insist
on designing it to value our humanity… then we just might lose it.

How can we use technology thoughtfully?
How can we start minimally and carefully
Checking in along the way on what we’re losing as we’re gaining?

This space has always been a playground on which to innovate,
And this will always be the case.
But as we move into the future and as we create
the next wave
Of existence…

How can we do so with our radical humanity?

Credits

Written & Read: Max Stossel

Camera: Alex Colby, Alicia Sully

Edit: Alicia Sully

Produced: Clara Wetzel, Lina Plioplyte, Sebastian Lindstrom

Music: Max Lemurian

Burning Man Team: Dominique Debecquoy-Dodley, Jenn Sander