dumb little black box

I find myself perpetually sucked into the vortex of my phone. Even with notifications effectively off and the more “dangerous” apps behind screen time and other lines of defense, it is too easy to pick it up and find myself searching the web or scrolling around looking for things.

Why am I doing this? Because I have a microscopic amount of wait time with whatever I’m doing (yes, maybe vibe coding) or I’m simply procrastinating. I have a decision to make or something to research but it’s not as fun as the would-be distraction.

The solution? A common one: leave my phone in another room, as I will under no circumstances get up from my desk to go find my phone and waste time.

There are other situations in which I feel the pull of these phantom notifications - situations where it’s more difficult to divorce myself from the device. They tend to have common denominators: I’m navigating somewhere, I want or need to make myself accessible by phone, or I need to communicate with the outside world for either an errand or an emergency.

But first, two recent experiences where I was free of the machine.

lost in tokyo

One day I was on my way to the gym, taking a different route than usual. My phone had about 3% battery and I expected to be on the bus for 30 minutes. “No big deal,” I thought, “I’ll plug it into my laptop to get a charge”. Except I had taken it out of that bag the night before.

There were other options: I could try to memorize the bus stop names, except they were unfamiliar (as the names of places so often are) Japanese words, and my working memory is already not great. Or, I could count how many stops were left, which would be a solid option, if I hadn’t fallen asleep for 15 minutes.

I hopped off around what I imagined to be 30 minutes later. I had my laptop and figured I could find a konbini somewhere that offered Wi-Fi. No dice. I walked up and down nearby major roads and could not find a single convenience store, which is unusual in Tokyo. No cafes or public Wi-Fi either, as it was a residential area.

By some stroke of luck I happened to have a Google Maps page open already on my laptop, albeit for a different area. Still, this provided a low fidelity map of the neighborhood, just without any labels.

I decided to make this into a game. How could I find my way back? I knew I was near some sort of expressway which would probably be easy to spot on the map. I ran around a bit until I found the expressway number and thankfully was able to cross-reference this with the offline map. I then had to find my approximate position on this long stretch of otherwise featureless north-to-south road.

Of course, I could have asked someone where I was or tried to hail a taxi, but that would be cheating. So instead, I roamed around with my MacBook splayed open in my hand and turned a few heads.

Eventually I found where the expressway had intersected another, thereby pinpointing my location on the offline map. This gave me my bearings; if I were to head West on the road a few blocks over, I’d be close to the station near my gym.

It was a blast. I was much more aware of my surroundings and my actual, physical location. I started to notice shifts in density as I worked my way across different neighborhoods. I encountered English schools and poorly-located hotels. I found myself wondering. Wondering why the sidewalk was so narrow, why there was not much signage in the area, how people decide on their Wi-Fi passwords or network names, where the people who got off at my stop were going. I was curious because I was not distracted.

The experience made me realize how dependent I am on my phone for navigation, which isn’t that surprising in a place like Tokyo. What was surprising was how vulnerable I felt without this dumb little black box and it’s go-go juice.

day at the museum

At the time of writing this article, I’m currently traveling in Kyushu. My first destination was Kagoshima so that I could start at one of the southernmost prefectures and work my way north back to Tokyo.

One afternoon in Kagoshima, I visited the Reimeikan (黎明館) Museum, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in the history of the area. Admission was cheap, there were few people, it was highly informative with loads of English captions, and there were many preserved artifacts on display spanning thousands of years.

I was deeply immersed during my visit because I had deliberately locked my phone in a coin locker prior to entering the museum. It’s almost poetic in a way; I imprisoned the thing that imprisons my attention.

I was fascinated by the history of the festivals, by weapons from the Jomon period, how pottery was introduced to Kagoshima (originally from Korea, apparently), and there was so much more.

There were interactive panels that displayed a bit of info about the exhibit by which they were placed. They felt like they were designed by a video game designer… in the 80s. They had an old Windows XP esque screensaver going, weird digital sounds to indicate feedback, and for an inexplicable reason the main two characters on every page were a boy and his dog.

Another fun installation was a touch-screen panel that played videos demonstrating how culture has evolved in southern Japan. A favorite of mine was a curation of conversations in different, perhaps now extinct, dialects of Kyushu. These languages were so far from modern Japanese that I couldn’t pick out a single word. These weren’t heady discussions either - mostly smalltalk.

I collected my phone at the end of the visit with zero photos to show but a markedly better time. The inability to take photos made the experience that much more precious. I had a lot of questions popping up as I learned more, but alas, my notes app wasn’t by my side. I’m looking into a Field Notes approach for the future.

onwards

Clearly I’m interested in not having my phone on me where possible. I’m not sure I’ll reach that state of 1990’s zen anytime soon, but until then I wonder if I can nullify the functionality of the device while I’m in-transit so that it solely satisfies the requirements of both 1) serving to as a navigational tool and 2) enables me to communicate with the world if needed.

I’m going to think on this some more. A few solutions that come to mind before I wrap up this post and get some sleep:

• iOS ‘focus’ profile which only allows maps / phone / LINE / notes apps, activated by some location-based automation
• offload the responsibility to a separate device and leave my phone in my bag rather than my pocket
• pre-load my routes / download an offline map of Tokyo, use a similar automation to disable cell service

This could work nicely as my Boox Palma 2 will let me read and listen to podcasts, but not sure how it would fare based solely on offline navigation. It would probably be beneficial to take the same routes / go to the same places rather than the most efficient (dynamic) routes.

How did we ever get anywhere in the 90s? Oh right, we printed paper maps from Yahoo???

We only made and received calls at home? No texting???

That’s… in a way, ideal. We couldn’t be distracted (by our phones) because we didn’t have the option. We had some pretty sweet, big, clunky purple gameboys though.

Having your phone in your pocket is hedging your attention. There is always something more interesting at hand, and it kind of sucks. For that reason, I think there is something to be said for the “my phone only works at home” approach that Seinfeld has burned into my brain after so many watches.