I read Documentally’s news blog post with a twinge of jealousy today: Rebalancing my relationship with technology. I’d read about the Punkt phone in his newsletter (which you should subscribe to, it’s very good) and my mouse pointer hovered over the buy button the Punkt website…
I would love to do this, but some things stop me. £230 is a lot for a ‘dumb’ phone, when the OnePlus 3 (which I own) is £329 and the OnePlus 2 is £239, sure I could use an old Nokia like Christian suggests, but where’s the fun in that? New tech drives me to try new things. But this is new tech driving me to do … nothing. Well, it’s not really “nothing” it’s just something else. Look at trees, skies, plants, be engaged in the moment. Be engaged in the people around me. Be engaged.
Mostly all of my communications during the day are text based. The only people I actually speak to on my phone are my mum and, occasionally, my wife (I don’t mean I only occasionally speak to my wife, just that we WhatsApp mostly and the odd call for clarity or high bandwidth). Most communication is fairly brief “Check this out: [youtubeurl]”, “See you later”, “Can you forward me the thing we spoke about?”.
Some of it is international – I work with a team in India, there’s a lot of text-based comms (email, slack) but also a daily chat.
So, without buying a Punkt (or resorting to an old Nokia) can I digital detox? Can I commit to only using the data functions of my phone when on the wifi?
Would it really hurt to call people more? Maybe I’ll enjoy it.
