The world is on fire but the new Google Pixel 3 — a Good Phone, which I recommend you buy if you like Android and can afford it, although its updates are mostly incremental — in my pocket is cool to the touch. A dark slab of metal and glass. It comes alive when I rub my finger across the back of it.

And then!

“We’re doomed,” a colleague texts me on Signal*. A push alert from a well-regarded news site has more details on the alleged murder and dismemberment of a Saudi journalist. On Nextdoor, several neighbors report that their drinking water has tested positive for unsafe levels of pesticides. The Citizen app prompts me to record video of an angry naked man rampaging in the shit-strewn streets of San Francisco. Facebook is hacked and our information is out there. Everyone on Twitter is angry, you fucking cuck. You idiot. You tender, triggered snowflake. Everyone on Instagram is posturing, posing. You are less beautiful than they. The places you go are not as interesting. You should feel bad because you are worse in every way. The world is dying; come see it, come see it.



I don’t recall exactly when my phone became such a festival of stress and psychological trauma, but here we are.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh but that camera! That screen! The Lens feature that can tell me what I’m looking at — what kind of plant it is or what kind of animal it is or what information is captured in a business card so that I do not have to go to the library and I do not have to enter it in or even remember it at all. I don’t have to remember! Okay, Google, I don’t want to think about it. Okay?

Okay?

Eleven, almost twelve, years ago I sat in the cavern of a convention center in San Francisco and watched as Steve Jobs, who at this point was not-quite-yet-but-almost god-king of Silicon Valley, bragged about the new device Apple would soon unleash upon the world. I was enthralled.

It was my instant companion, and I spent hours alone with it, staring into it as it relieved me of the tedium of everyday life. The boredom cure. The everywhere camera. But! It was the arrival of third-party apps a decade ago that really sold the phone. Twitter! (But really, Tweetie.) Messaging and maps and YouTube and real honest-to-god email and web browsing. Information was suddenly always fresh, always new. The drip-drip-drop of updates soon turned into a trickle and then a torrent.

My neck hurts. I am never not looking down. When I am not looking at my phone, I become slightly anxious. And then, when I do actually look at it, I become even more so. It reminds me of how I once felt about cigarettes. I experience the world with a meticulously crafted, tiny computer slab between me and it. I am an asshole. But so, maybe, are you?

Look around any city street and there we all are, with our heads down, walking past each other, unaware. I saw you in your car driving with your phone in your hand. I saw you at the playground looking at your phone while your child’s life passed you by. I saw you on your date, alone together.

Our phones are furthering genocide in Myanmar, lynchings in India, misinformation in the United States. Our phones are making us stupid. Our phones are making us stressed. Our phones are radicalizing and dividing society. Violent delights.

And sure, it is due to the data coursing through our phones, not our phones themselves. But if Twitter is responsible for the trolling and abuse and harassment on its platform, are Google and Apple as well? If Facebook helped fuel genocide in Myanmar, does that responsibility lie with society, or Facebook, or the platform upon which the platform is built? (I honestly do not know. But, again, here we are. Are you reading this on your phone? Are you happy? Are you distracted? Is there something more interesting, more urgent, just a notification away?)

And then there is the tracking. There is an exchange at play, of course. In order to receive the global info torrent, we must in turn provide a personal one about ourselves. This is especially true of Android phones, more so than iPhones.

I wanted to share all of the information this phone captured about me during the long weekend I spent reviewing it. But there was simply too much of it, and in too much detail. Publishing it would put me in real financial and perhaps physical peril. And, besides, I’m not even sure if I am aware of it all, or if I even could capture it all. What's out there? We have no idea.

We are reaching a point of no return, when it comes to information collection, if we have not already gone beyond it. Cameras and screens, microphones and speakers. Capture your face and your voice and your friends' faces and voices and where you are and what’s in your email and where you were when you sent it and... What did you say? Click, here’s an ad. And where did you go? Click, here’s an ad. Who were you with? Here’s an ad. What did you read here’s an ad how do you feel here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely?

Some of the new Pixel 3’s best features are ones designed to help you not use the phone. Digital Wellbeing (which you can also enable on the previous Pixels) will turn your phone’s screen grayscale and turn off your notifications. It will tell you how much time you have spent on your phone for the day, and which apps you have spent that time in. You can also set a time limit on apps if you want. I found this useful and good. (It is also easily circumvented.)