I’ve had very little to say about the world of pens, stationery, or other analogue writing tools lately. I love and use the pens I have, but I haven’t acquired anything new. I’m managing my to-do lists, notes, and plans in a Leuchtturm. You know, the usual.
I have, however, recently made a different analogue-adjacent change: A week ago, I switched to a dumb phone. Like almost everyone, I’ve been wanting to get rid of my smartphone for years, but I made excuses for why I couldn’t. I need the best camera on me at all times, for work. I need it to use my LA Metro TAP card, or to call a Waymo. I need GPS. How oh how would I get around Los Angeles without GPS?
My most used excuse: AirPods are just too damn good. What an embarrassing sentence.
Frankly, I was being a wimp. I wanted to get rid of my smartphone. I should, for the sake of my brain, my work, my life, get rid of my smartphone. I don’t need to tell you the reasons. You’ve heard them. You know them. You feel them every day.
So a week ago, after reading August Lamm’s tell-it-like-it-is new book You Don’t Need a Smartphone, I got rid of my smartphone. I got a flip phone. No, not a foldable—a dumb phone. It cost $20. I removed the number and data plan from my iPhone, turned it off, and buried it in a drawer.
Turns out, life without a smartphone is fine. It took me all of a day to learn how to use T9. Plus, this phone has voice-to-text, and it’s way better than the almost-always-wrong can’t-turn-it-off auto-punctuation in Apple’s new “smarter” (read: dumber) A.I. dictation. Like, way better. Like, it gets my sentences, including the punctuation, right nearly every single time.
The phone has GPS, too. Although I barely need it (which is good, because it’s clunky to use on the tiny 480p screen). It’s fun to write down directions, draw a little map in my pocket notebook, and then follow them, building a mental model of the city in my head as I go (this is far more useful, in the long term, than a digital map). I use a physical TAP card to take the train or the bus. I bring a magazine with me, or a book. Coming home the other night, it was too dark at the bus stop to read, so I stood there and waited, thinking, with my thoughts.
I’m a big movie-goer (I write movies now, sometimes, as part of my work), and I have an AMC A-List membership. I reserve the ticket on my computer and the write down the confirmation code. I pick the ticket up at the kiosk inside the theater. It’s a physical ticket. I can glue-stick it into my journal, a physical reminder of the movie I saw. (Most recently: You Can See Everything. Five out of five stars.)
What else?
I take notes in my pocket notebook, with my Kaweco Brass Sport. People ask me questions about the pen. And about the Montblanc Great Gatsby Green ink that’s currently in it. If I make an appointment, or need a reminder, I write it down.
Because I take the bus and train, I don’t need a smartphone for parking. Did you know that you can call an Uber? There’s also a service that will reserve you one via text. Autonomous vehicles are safer than human-driven vehicles, yes, and I want to be excited about the technology, in a better future where it’s not controlled by corporations, but Waymo is, at heart, a surveillance company.
My phone struggles to receive group messages. This is indeed sometimes an inconvenience.
My apartment building requires, requires, a smartphone to pay for laundry via a QR code—one reason the smartphone is still in the drawer, rather than on Craigslist. I do laundry only every week or two, so I should be using my phone only every week or two.
I’ve read three books in the last week. I’ve watched five movies. I’ve edited two episodes of One Question. I’ve written a letter. I’ve spent dozens of hours enjoying the company of friends and loved ones. I’ve spent zero hours on a smartphone.
Lamm opens her book with an epigraph from the late Wendell Barry:
To be fearful of the disease and yet unwilling to pay for the cure is not just to be hypocritical; it is to be doomed.
I don’t have anything else to add to that.
