Just one year shy of its 20th anniversary, the iPhone, and the other electronic devices we use daily, sure have changed modern life — and not all for the better.
What we gained
CNET features 17 products that are now obsolete in our digital world, such as paper maps.
I remember my dad getting lost on the way to Ocean City, Maryland, every summer as he attempted to follow the handwritten instructions our neighbor gave us. GPS has happily ended that nightmare.
I haven’t worn a wristwatch in years — with an iPhone always nearby, who needs one? — but I do cherish the one my father wore the last 30 years of his life. I wear it at family occasions.
I grew up when Polaroid instant cameras were cutting-edge technology. They were put out of business by digital cameras, which lost significant market share to the superb camera and video-recording device on iPhones and other smartphones.
Of course, the iPhone gave life to the narcissistic selfie — and a voice and platform for everyone — as well as regrettable photos of what our “friends” have for breakfast every morning.
Digital devices destroyed the print newspaper, allowing us to get instant news on any subject anytime we want.
The golden era of syndicated humor columnists was already in its death throes as I started to enjoy some national success 20 years ago. Sometimes I wish I had been born 40 years earlier to enjoy reading my favorite columnist in a massive print newspaper while sipping a cup of coffee.
CNET rounds out its list of products made unnecessary by digital devices to include the calculator, music players, calendars, books and landline telephones — and there are surely hundreds of other devices and products we no longer think or talk about thanks to digital innovation.
What we lost
It’s true that texting existed before the iPhone, but the iPhone’s small keyboard transformed it from an occasional nuisance into a constant form of agitation and interruption.
It took me years to master the typewriter keyboard — a grand 19th-century advance that allows humans to efficiently transfer complete thoughts to paper with multiple fingers. How did that innovation give way so quickly to humans using only two thumbs to bastardize the English language, LOL?
It’s now nearly impossible to have a serious, face-to-face conversation with anyone under 30 without him or her obsessively pressing their fattest two fingers on a small keypad while avoiding eye contact. According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, constant text notifications fragment focus and destroy the capacity for sustained attention. The mere presence of a smartphone reduces concentration.
Which brings us to modern rudeness.
According to the journal Computers in Human Behavior, digital technologies give us an anonymity that enables us to post things we’d never say to another human in person. As a result, Psychology Today reports, our simple lack of eye contact is driving increasingly nasty tweets and posts, making rudeness in daily life our “new normal.”
Thanks to digital innovation, civility and political tribalism are also taking a beating.
According to Public Discourse, smartphones and social media have fueled a “new tribalism.” People sort into smaller, more hostile groups. Social media algorithms create echo chambers in which we are introduced to like-minded people and ideas that make those with whom we disagree not only disagreeable, but evil.
Digital technologies that were originally intended to increase information sharing have instead narrowed it. We are left divided and angry and much less able to engage in civil conversation and benefit from other points of view.
Still sorting it out
The iPhone will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, but for all the convenience and good this powerful pocket computer has done, we have yet to sort out the bad it is also doing.
Personally, I try to build on the positive aspects of digital innovation by sharing funny videos of my dog, Thurber, on YouTube (@thurberstail) and warm and hilarious nostalgia videos on my “70s Mischief” pages on Facebook and others.
Still, the odd thing about human invention: For every step we take forward, we seem to simultaneously take a few backward. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just received a text I must reply to.
Tom Purcell writes a column for the Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
