Series: Replacing My Smartphone Apps with Their Real-World Equivalents (Introduction)
This experiment had its genesis on a day when I was extremely frustrated with the cost of my monthly cell phone bill. Last summer, my iPhone 6 suddenly turned off — never to light up its screen or my heart again — and in a panic, I upgraded to an iPhone 7 Plus with very little hesitation. I was almost done paying off the iPhone 6 and resigned myself to that fact that I would be starting those payments all over again for a new phone that I NEEDED right then.
A year later, that resignation has worn off and has been replaced with regret that I was so attached to having a smartphone, I willingly signed up for $30 monthly installments for years to come. Hundreds of dollars…for a phone. And that’s when the idea for this experiment came to my mind. While I originally wanted to switch to a flip phone in protest of “the system,” I decided against that because my immediate family has a group chat that I adore and helps keep me connected to them all of these miles away. Instead, I began to think of ways I could “dumb down” my smartphone without losing that connection to home. I asked myself, “What would happen if you replaced your apps with the physical items that the apps themselves replaced? You would need a watch, alarm clock, music player, calculator, notepad, bus schedules and maps — wow.” I can feel my purse become heavier as I type the words.
Parameters
I am still deciding on the parameters for this experiment but here are my beginning thoughts:
- I will replace one app at a time with its physical equivalent, most likely one app a week. There are some apps I do not use so I will skip those and probably rely on the “Unused Apps” list in my iPhone settings to determine this.
- I will continue to use the Phone, Messages, Camera, and Photos apps. I have no desire to buy a brand new camera when my iPhone camera is amazing. My monthly payments are paying for this camera!
- At this time, I’m not sure yet if I will compound the app replacements or just replace each app for a week and return to using the app after the week is up. In particular, I’m thinking about Google Maps. Without a car, I rely on this app multiple times throughout the day and cannot imagine going without it for a week, let alone beyond that. But I will try.
- As I’ll be posting these updates on Medium for school, I will set a preliminary timeline of experimentation from now until the end of the semester — which I think is about 10 weeks from now— and reassess the timeline then. I’m sure I use more than 10 apps consistently but I think this is a good goal to begin with.
- I will try my best to purchase secondhand items or use items I already own instead of purchasing brand new items. Living a sustainable/environmentally ethical lifestyle is really important to me so I want to maintain as much of that ethos as possible while staying true to the experiment. I foresee a lot of plastic in my future, which is unfortunate.
Hypotheses
I anticipate my life will become a lot more inconvenient and it will become a lot less minimal. Despite buying secondhand or reusing items I already own, there will be additional expenses to see this experiment through and the need to make more space in my small apartment for them.
I imagine by having less information and resources available at my fingertips, I’ll be more bored at times and may feel sadness from the disconnection. Less exposure to visual advertisements may have a psychological impact but I am not sure how to measure that.
Based on a few thoughts I have already had, I believe I will have an increased interest in learning how these physical/real world items actually work. I want to understand how CD players read discs. I want to understand how radio waves work. This may seem elementary to some but because I don’t yet know the underlying technology of these items, the prospect of research is very exciting to me. I would also like to explore physically making/creating at least one of these app replacements myself (ex. getting a watch kit, making a calculator, etc.) and that may be the exception to the buying secondhand parameter.
First Replacement: Spotify > CD Player/Radio
In order to move forward and not overthink this, I went to the ARC the same afternoon I thought about all of this on the hunt for a portable CD player and/or radio. I had done a little research on Amazon and was not happy with the reviews or the cost that I saw for CD players. I walk into the store and within three minutes, I am holding a Memorex CD Player and a Sony Walkman radio in my hands — heaven sent. I then spent an hour enraptured by the used CD collection at the store, much longer than I planned on staying. I think at one point I was talking to myself/laughing out loud, reliving memories and struggling to keep the amount of CDs I would buy to a minimum.
My next post will focus on this first replacement in more detail but I wanted to introduce it here. I thankfully (?) own an aging MacBook Pro with an optical drive which makes creating my own music mixes easy. As far as the radio, I cannot remember the last time I listened to it as I don’t have a car so that will be an interesting experience. There will still be quite a bit of advertisement exposure with the radio so I will try to document that impact in the post. I may record recap videos to keep my written posts digestible and share more naturally what my experiences are like with each replacement.
Closing Thoughts
I’m a little afraid. I wonder if maybe I’m taking my frustrations too far and should just accept the reality of cell phone upgrades and software prevalence. The privilege of even considering this is not lost on me — the fact that I can choose whether or not to have internet connectivity at touch of a finger is a big deal. And I feel that this may be foolish, unnecessarily difficult, and cause more stress than it provides interesting insights. Am I taking too extreme of a position against exorbitant cell phone costs?
My reservations themselves are intriguing to me because I grew up in a generation that saw a rapid progression in technology and conveniences. However, I am not unfamiliar with the “hard way” of doing things. I remember when my parents first bought a microwave. I still remember Christmas 1998 because I got a tape player and two cassettes. I would start and stop songs over and over so that I could write down lyrics. By hand.
I have also had enough of my formative years shaped by iPods and iPhones that this experiment is a difficult exercise for my brain to even consider completing. Going to the bank in-person to make transfers. Pulling out a notebook to keep track of my thoughts. Programming alarms into a wristwatch so that I leave on time to catch the light rail.
But isn’t life about inconvenience, about persevering through hard situations, about things being difficult sometimes and that difficulty being okay? Thinking about places around the world and other societies at different times in history, inconvenience, hardship, things taking longer, etc. were a normal way of life. When I ride the bus, I notice some riders must pick up the newest bus schedule pamphlet while I have the luxury of just checking my phone at any moment.
I’d love your suggestions/thoughts on:
- a name for this series
- ideas for where to find kits on how to make a watch, for example
- whether I should compound my replacements or just do one singular replacement each week
- whether or not videos would add something valuable to this series
- ideas on how to maintain/manage my environmental ethics and expectations while willingly purchasing plastic replacements for digital items
That’s it for now. I’ll update again next week!
