From my cold, dead hands!

Remember Moses saying that?

Of course it was not Moses. It was Charleton Heston who played that role.  And, no, he did not utter those lines when walking around as Moses.  Heston was scaring the cult, er, the NRA, that the government was coming to get their guns.  This was 18 years ago, when the NRA was campaigning against Al Gore.

No, this is not a post about guns.

It is about smartphones about which most people will defiantly declare that they will never be separated from them. "From my cold, dead hands!"

More and more people are talking and writing about this smartphone addiction.

If I’m honest, much of what I did on my phone could be characterized as mindless. I can’t count the number of times I pulled out my phone just for the feeling of unlocking the screen and swiping through applications, whether out of comfort—like a baby sucking her thumb—or boredom—like a teenager at school, tapping his fingers on a desk. In those cases, I sought not mental stimulation, but physical release.

In the old days, at the airports, for instance, people might have even attempted to talk to the people next to them.  Or, maybe they walked up and down observing people and wandering into stores.  Now, it is all about the smartphone--even if they are only aimlessly and mindlessly locking and unlocking their phones!

If personal technology is improving the world of thought, what is it doing to the world of our moving, breathing bodies?

What is it doing to us?

The author of that essay has given up her smartphone.

Without my phone, I’m more fully myself, both in mind and body. And now, more than ever, I know that looking at my phone is nothing compared to looking at my daughter while the room sways as I rock her to sleep, or how shades of indigo and orange pour in through the window and cast a dusky glow over her room, or the way her warm, milky breath escapes in tiny exhalations from her lips, or how the crickets outside sing their breathless, spring lullaby.

I don't believe in giving up the smartphone.  But, I do believe in moderation. I believe in making sure that I own the phone, and that the iPhone does not own me.  Often, just to make sure I know how to operate in this world without the smartphone, I go about running errands without carrying my phone.  As much as possible, I refuse to use the map app.  I don't have to die in order to give up my iPhone.