I have just discovered the beauty of long, silent drives; of hearing a friend’s voice; of reading to fill time, and it is all so luxurious. Simply put, I am in an unexplainable state of freedom. I gave up my phone for a week, and here’s what happened…

***

It is currently 5:26 in the evening and the writer is having a hard time trying to articulate the slippery truths of the powerful essence that is your smartphone without sounding like a Neo-Luddite. So I shall start at the beginning…

About a month ago, I posted a poem (you can read it here if you so wish) about the effects of the digital age, and how it felt to fast from my phone. The fast began as a mere experiment, a sort of test, and partly came about from a curiosity to see what it would have been like in the 1980s when all one had were things like the radio, tapes, and clunky-looking phones attached to walls that rang obscenely and had big curly chords hanging from them (I didn’t actually see the 80s – being too young – but I’ve heard from very reliable sources that they were grand).     

This experiment turned out better than anything I’ve done in a long time. My imagination woke up because my brain entertained itself rather than greedily consuming information from the weird pocket-sized piece of glass in the back of my jeans that took the liberty to vibrate occasionally (I have since changed the vibrate to a loud, offensive ring).

My mind became less gluttonous – these were lean times, without all that excess information going in – and I had to make do with the autumn breeze, the sunlight on the leaves, and books. I had time to read and learn and disappear into other worlds. What was once a long, noisy drive to work listening to music or podcasts became a smooth, silent commute into the city. Sometimes I put on the radio, sometimes I sang, mostly I just listened to the traffic and thought and watched people. It was all surprisingly normal and very nice. I grew curiously child-like, glad and quieted; I was obliged to wait, to stop when I didn’t want to, to relearn painful things. And yet, I found myself enormously happy – like the little child skipping alongside her long-legged parent. For the child, her lack of control and utter dependence makes her the most joyous person in the street.  

I realised my smartphone had become more than a tool, because without it, I was lost. Literally, because I didn’t own a street directory, and figuratively because I’d feel the pull of it when it was not with me, the pull of the ‘phantom digital presence’¹ as Peco puts it (though this pull grew delightedly less as time went on).

Now, the absolute unnecessariness of my smartphone amuses me. I can safely say it is not a tool. A hammer is a tool, a washing machine is a tool, a car is a tool. A tool is not something that sits around in your pocket all day demanding you’re attention. One simply does not get addicted to washing machines. Besides, a tool usually performs a function, not many. Smartphones are used in place of street directories, cameras, torches, alarm clocks, watches, notepads, encyclopedias; they’re used for administration, entertainment, and  communication, eliminating the important distinction between those things which not very long ago was the norm. Back before smartphones were invented, rarely would a person go to the same place (or thing) for entertainment as they would to get admin done. Such lack of separation in our lives blurs important lines of distinction so that perhaps one day we will see that all things have become one thing, and therefore everything has become nothing (if that rather convoluted sentence confuses you, it does me too! Chesterton talks more about the idea in his book Orthodoxy). Yes, a smartphone is many things but the one thing it’s definitely not is a tool – though it could well be the One Device to Rule Them All. In a strange and frightening paradox, it gives you an alarming amount of control, while all the time it is controlling you. Smartphones are – or shall be – the bane of our existence. And I soon discovered that mine was hindering my rest, disrupting my joy and disturbing my peace.

Intuition, wit and intelligence are now (almost) old-fashioned. Perhaps in the deeps of entertainment, ease and convenience, we have forgotten how good thinking is, and how good hard work is – how important it is to our humanity. For we were made with hands to make things, to give with, and to forge ourselves a place in the world. Now, however, much of our existence depends on machines. We are forgetting to be human and becoming something lesser. There is no doubt in my mind that AI will never master the human experience because it never can. And sadly, it doesn’t have to. Humans are becoming more and more robotic with every day that passes. Excessive use of machines is making us irritable, impatient, anxious and really quite stupid. Yes, we are forgetting. Though we have the world at our fingertips instead – a frightening and bizarre reality. I couldn’t think of anything less horrific and unnatural than having the entire world within easy reach… And I can hear an echo of a much-loved and well-known piece of poetry come to mind. A familiar voice speaks it with menace, and yet it is a voice we all know well… ‘One Ring to Rule them all / One Ring to find them / One Ring to bring them all / And in the darkness bind them’. Jolly inconvenient if you ask me – and ironic coming from the thing that has tricked us all into thinking it is Master of easy efficiency and convenience.  

For we were made with hands to make things, to give with, and to forge ourselves a place in the world.

It shall be at the end of time, perhaps, that this failure to separate ourselves from our devices will be our ruin: like it was Vashti and Kuno’s in E.M. Forster’s 1904 short story The Machine Stops. Kuno explains to his mother, Vashti, just how destructive The Machine is to their humanity:

‘Cannot you see… that it is we who are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops – but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die. Oh – I have no remedy – or, at least, only one – to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of Wessex as Alfred the Great saw them when he overthrew the Danes. So the sun set. I forgot to mention that a belt of mist lay between my hill and other hills, and that it was the colour of pearl.’²

 What is the solution to it all, you ask? Kuno has just told us. And I can see it now – in the layer of pearly cloud snuggled against Wessex and in the memories of Alfred the Great. I can smell it in the scent of the sea, in musty paper, and in the autumn breezes bringing in the golden blue hues in sky and leaf. I can feel it in the joy of doing ordinary human things like praying, chatting to friends over coffee or a snuggly pint, sitting by the fire, star gazing, driving, singing, or bringing the washing in. I know it in the freedom of our minds. For it is best that our minds remain free, just as they should be. Let nothing dominate them.

***

And with that, I hear it in the sounds of an ancient Carpenter’s workshop – dull thuds and scrapings of wood upon wood, mere tappings – the bellow of a cow in the deep afternoon. And I can see the sun streaming through the sawdust. And I catch a glimpse of the living, breathing Man who somehow didn’t think being human was below Him. For He lived, bound to the earth for a while – and it turned out to be His glory.

1 Forster, E.M. (2001), The Machine Stops and Other Stories, Penguin Random House.

2 Peco. (2025, Januaery 7). The Phantom and Mr. Jobs: Is there a way to stop brain drain?. Pilgrims in the Machine. https://pilgrimsinthemachine.substack.com/p/the-phantom-and-mr-jobs-is-there