I recently finished rereading one of my favorite short stories by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, titled It’s Such a Beautiful Day.
In the story, a precocious young boy is diagnosed with a rather peculiar disorder—one virtually unknown in his time.
Set on April 12, 2177—my 234th birthday, thank you very much—the story envisions a world where people no longer need to step outside. Through a system of teleportation “Doors,” individuals can travel instantly: from home to school, from New York to London, all without ever experiencing the outdoors.
No one needs to go outside again.
Except, due to a small electronic malfunction on this day, one young boy is forced to go out—and discovers that he likes it.
Near the end of the story, the psychiatrist assigned to the boy’s case tells his mother:
“As he grows older, he will become more aware of t
he expectations and demands of society. He will learn to conform. After all, there is a little of the rebel in each of us, but it generally dies down as we all grow old and tired.”
Prescient, no?
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Rebellions and Rectangles
Pushing the sci-fi theme a little further, Star Wars offers a salient reminder:
“Rebellions are built on hope.”
So what does any of this have to do with us?
Namely this: the most powerful form of rebellion we can engage in today may be as simple as putting our phones down.
In a recent podcast, entrepreneur and cultural commentator Scott Galloway reflected on the rise of streaming television and the fall of traditional broadcast media:
“America has lost two pillars of society: shared experiences and a collective. Without shared stories, we don’t laugh together, love and hate the same heroes and villains, or believe in the same facts when we argue. We lose our empathy—our ability to see each other as human. It’s easy to hate someone whose cultural references are completely foreign to your feed.”
The more we engage with the small rectangles in our hands—devices that contain all the knowledge of the world—the more isolated we become. Our feeds begin to reflect only our preferences, magnifying what we like and filtering out what we don’t.
And so, the world narrows.
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A Rebellion of Attention
One of the most radical acts you can take today is simply to not be on your phone. To pause. To notice.
I tried it recently.
Sitting in a waiting room earlier this week, I observed 22 people—of all ages, backgrounds, and genders—all looking down at their phones.
During that time, they missed the sunlight dappling through the trees.
They missed the state flag rising and falling in the breeze.
They missed the birds dancing in the air.
And when the occasional person noticed me—without a phone in my hand, simply smiling at the world around me—the oddest thing happened.
They looked away.
Because, in that moment, the screen mattered more than engaging with another human being sharing the same space and reason for being there.
To be fair, some of this might be attributed to social anxiety.
But it also begs the question: how much of our inability to engage with one another is directly related to the rectangle we hold in our hands?
Is our discomfort with social conversation, in fact, a byproduct of our over-reliance on technology?
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Loving the Tool, Questioning the Cost
Let me be clear: I love technology.
I love the seamless experience of Apple products.
I love the insights my Garmin and Oura provide about my health and sleep.
But at what cost does this convenience come?
And more importantly—
Is losing touch with this one, beautiful, unfiltered world a price worth paying?
Each of us ought to consider, for application in our own life, the following words by Jonathan Haidt, taken from his book The Anxious Generation:
“Maybe it’s not healthy for any human being to have unfettered access to everything, everywhere, all the time, for free.”