I envision a holographic future. One day, everything will be accessible from a holographic interface that materializes before us at will. Every intangible thing about our lives will reside before us in the ether — every form of organization, communication, recreation.
Being creatures naturally motivated by intangible forces, forcing the abstract into the concrete shouldn't be a difficult transition. Powered by a never-ceasing source of global wireless Internet, such a constant in our lives that merely saying the word would seem annoyingly analytic, like a poet musing about the air, we tap at the two-dimensional interface. 3-D is almost on the market. We drag an icon with our finger. Go through a list with a lazy wave of the hand.
However whimsically written, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the technology in the passage above is already reality. Smartphones are what link the present to what a few years ago would still be scifi: the totally wireless, always connected, all-purpose interface.
But it's a game-changer. The singular event that was the release of the first iPhone was not without its zeitgeist of change, but the gradual evolution of computers, digital music players, cellphones and every other specialized media device that's been assimilated into these small screens has deprived us of the disorienting and awe-inspiring experience Apple's release should have been. A receptive energy worthy of how much the device and the enormous digital infrastructure behind it are changing things. How, exactly, is hard to tell.
We are familiar with the stereotypes that have been the subject of earlier studies, aimed more at popular social phenomena, like texting teens and Facebook fiends. Yet the subject of these current studies is both more general and more focused, because only now has enough time passed so that people are doing the same thing, with the same level of access at a similar and consistent rate. The industry stage, the major players and what they're pushing is, for now, more or less constant: wireless access for all your information and communication needs at ever-increasing speeds.
It is critical to point out that the unprecedented potency of the smartphone comes from the fact that we are already dependent on the services it offers: It merely puts them in our pockets — in a cellphone, if it can even be called that. The history of the world hasn't remotely prepared language to accurately describe what iPhone and Droid actually do.
Basically, the phones compete with the physical world for your brain's attention. It may seem benign enough to check your various inboxes and/or surf the web and/or explore a new app whenever you're not preoccupied with something concrete like opening doors or making breakfast. It may even seem constructive and responsible to constantly be on top of your life. But the constant stream of centralized, low-level stimuli, however "relevant," is extremely habit-forming. The most casual Facebooker has felt the pull of notifications, and anyone who texts feels the pull of text messages.
But a smartphone's centralization of your information takes this anticipation to distracting new levels. The brain learns to anticipate incoming information, regardless of actual relevance to one's life, as early man anticipated predators on the savanna. Neuroeconomically speaking, the brain can't tell the difference. More difficulty focusing and blocking out distractions were consistent results in users tested.
Understanding the consequences of the smartphone's strong competition with the concrete involves the most rudimentary human learning processes. Human beings did not evolve with a constant stream of information potentially coming at them. The brain has evolved to process and remember new information most efficiently with little to no peripheral traffic happening in the background. Therefore, the constant stimulation that comes with obsessive use of smart phones (Is there any other way?) diverts processing capacity needed to remember and recall at full potential. Unnervingly, the most passive stimulus interrupts the process: It is easier to learn and remember walking through wilderness than through urban areas, with their distracting artificial constructs, like signs, words and flashes. The same principle applies.
Smartphones make us masters of information mediums the world has begun to value most. But we evolved to be hunter-gatherers, not digital data micromanagers. We've come so far in such a short time that such knowledge gaps are hardly surprising, but it's hardly in the interest of industry prime movers preoccupied with possibilities to apply findings of our neurological limitations for our theoretical long-term well-being. Independent research of these studies is recommended.
—Wiley Robinson is an undecided sophomore. He can be reached at rrobin23@utk.edu.