A New Minimalism
In my 20’s, the only tech I owned was an iMac computer, Nexus 5 smartphone, Nintendo Wii, and a TV set. I had this setup in part because I was broke and moving around a lot, but I was also a minimalist.
I wanted to rebuke the accumulation of stuff that I saw with my parents, so I got rid of everything that wasn’t necessary or serving my needs at the time. I avoided buying physical media, and I looked to digital technology to fill in the gaps.
The smartphone was the driver in the minimalist setup, particularly my Nexus 5 (2014). It was faster and more powerful than anything I had before, with a larger high resolution display, and it finally had good enough battery life for all-day use. When I went out, I no longer had to huddle around power outlets in public places!
Smartphones had reached maturity, and everbody knew it. A Radioshack advertisement from 1991 went viral because a smartphone could replace nearly all of the advertised gadgets. Steve Cichon wrote “the technology of only two decades ago now replaced by the 3.95 ounce bundle… in our pockets.” It was goodbye to all our old crap and hello to modernity. We now had the everything device.
Later that year, Slate called 2014 “The Year of Outrage”. They documented that every day of the year a public figure or current event caused a backlash on social media. At the time this was kind of an oddity, though now we might call it The First Year of Outrage. (What do you mean, one?)
It’s no coincidence that the year smartphones reach maturity is The Year of Outrage.
What makes the mobile medium different from the traditional PC is that it’s always on, always with you, and always connected – which means there is no rest from it, no boundaries, and no time to mentally reset.
The smartphone combines with internet media to become always-on internet media. It’s the internet with no natural boundaries of space, time, or context. You don’t have to wait to get home and log on to find out about something outrageous. It’s always with you.
No wonder the media environment feels angrier and crazier all the time. The emotional outrage harvests attention, the structure of internet media funnels our attention into apocalyptic thinking, and thanks to the new packaging, it’s everywhere all the time.
I originally thought of the smartphone as a simple exchange of one kind of stuff for another. It takes up no square footage in my home, sure, but the content of the phone takes up as much attention, or square footage of my mind, as I let it.
It was a mistake to think that reclaiming physical space by replacing a bunch of stuff with one device necessarily meant reclaiming mental space. It just didn’t work out that way for me, at least not once the everything-all-at-once aspect of internet media included all the time and everywhere.
I’m sure there are people who are bathed in internet media and handling it great, though I have my doubts judging from the weird and uncomfortable conversations that I find myself having. And maybe I’m more sensitive than the average person, more prone to ruminative thoughts, more likely to get into a negative feedback loop. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever the case, it’s how I’m wired and it’s what I’m working with. To reclaim space in my mind for what truly matters, I must keep smartphones and internet media at a remove. To me, that is the new minimalism.
Previously: