Mindful Technology Use

This feels like an important question, with a good "grand perspective" on the whole thing we find ourselves embedded into every day...

There’s a bottleneck here: our interfaces haven’t evolved to handle the flood of information that’s overflowing our minds. Our interfaces have been feeding us, but don’t allow for any digesting.

How can we use the web as a medium to think, not over months or years, but over a lifetime? How do you create context from an infinitely rotating roster of indistinguishable tabs?

Discussing smartphone use with various people recently, I quickly come back to the same question - what do you need it for? This is not a masked way of saying they don't need a smartphone, but a genuine question. I'm personally happy to accept that people use smartphones for a variety of reasons, from professional work, to having to pay for parking, and from medical technology to not having access to laptops or computers.

So maybe a stepping stone to better co-design of smartphone use is to be more open about what we need to use our phones for, and why we carry them around with us. This post, then, is a bit of an experiment to start surfacing thoughts. The question is applicable to all devices, but I figure a) better to start somewhere specific, and b) smartphones are a particularly "invasive" device. So...

Which functions on your smartphone do you feel you NEED it for, and why?

To start, I'd say there are some things I like to have my phone on me for - camera, photo editing, note-taking. But the things I probably need it for on the go are:

• Necessary contact from family and friends via phone call, text and (specific) group chats
• Parking apps, as paying by machine often isn't available here
• Finding directions in strange places
• Access to passwords and one-time codes
• Transferring emergency funds to kids' bank cards
• Checking my calendar

I guess there will be a lot of overlap, but that's good to know. And it would also be interesting to know what less common cases exist: I think a mindful tech movement risks coming from a privileged position, and so awareness of these less common needs is all an essential part of the discussion.

There are no right or wrong answers here, just the opportunity to open up and find out from others :)

Find this really helpful for reminding me to step away from computer, stretch, and refocus.

There are many apps that do the same thing (maybe even better!).

Thought I would start with one of my own recent posts, about setting up a separate account on my Android phone. I'm not quite ready or able to give up a smartphone altogether, but this is a good compromise for me.

So far, I really enjoy switching to the quiet mode, and generally use it by default - especially if I'm with others or am out and about. And it's just slow enough that I don't switch back unless I need to.

Greetings, this is a first post to the Mindful Technology community.

The community is a space to discuss ways of avoiding the confusion, struggle and burnout of using modern technology, for whatever reason. It is a way to regain some sense of control and calmness in a world which seems to demand we treat these things with distaste.

Everyone will have different ideas of what counts as Mindful Technology, and this is fine - technology is always subjective, and dependent on context. There are no right or wrong answers here, just interesting and alternative perspectives, and gentle encouragement to think more consciously about the tools that we use.

Enjoy the space.