Quiet Tech

A couple of weeks ago I read The Last Quiet Thing by Terry Godier, and it made me very conscious of what my devices were asking from me. I keep talking about seeking calm to everyone who’ll listen, and still I hadn’t seen it like that: our devices demanding work from us. We tend to think it’s only the big, evil, soul-shrinking companies demanding our attention, but on our side, a secondary-effect of having a tech device always communicating with the world is that it demands our intervention tens, even hundreds of times a day. And we tend to exercise very little control on what we do and how we deal with that fact. This is the part that led me to think about what I do: You will pick up your phone eighty, ninety, a hundred times today. Dismissing a notification 22% Intentional use 20% Checking something that pinged 18% Replying to a person 15% Updating, configuring, or fixing 12% Unlocking, forgetting why 8% Managing a subscription 5% Screen time you chose: 35% Screen time your devices…