Smartphones & other techie stuff

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." But who cares?

Shortly after I started working in a bank branch half-a-century ago I learnt how to use a typewriter. Using only my two index fingers I gradually got the hang of knocking out professional-looking letters and memorandums (as good as anything produced by the typing pool!) While this was unusual at the time, it gave me an advantage in the 1980s when computers and email came along. It was the same ‘qwerty’ keyboard so I was quickly able to master the new technology.

I built on that headstart. I had a (hefty) mobile phone in the early 1990s when there were few around. When I set up my own business not long afterwards I used a laptop packed with the latest software. I was always ahead in the technology stakes.

Things changed when mobile phones became smartphones. It was no longer just a phone. It was a powerful computer that could access the Internet out on the street, as well as at home or in the office. And it was much smaller and lighter than even the sleekest laptop. Yet I have never had a smartphone. Am I alone?

Today smartphones are everywhere. Young and old have one, even kids. When I collect my nine-year-old grandson after school, a few of his classmates have already whipped out their smartphones before they have reached the school gate. On a packed train many passengers are immersed in their devices, either scrolling endlessly through social media or talking to an unseen person in a faraway place. Sometimes I have to swerve to avoid someone walking towards me, oblivious to everything except the little screen in their hand. In shops customers pay for their goods by holding up their phones at the till.

One thing is clear. If everyone uses a smartphone it makes it a lot easier for an unscrupulous agency to monitor and control society. Is this a worry?

In his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell depicted a future in which people were spied on by the State. Orwell explained how this was possible.

In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.¹

But did Orwell exaggerate the power of the state? In his dystopia there was a difference between what the state claimed could be done by technology, and what that technology was actually capable of. Orwell’s imagined government tried to make everyone believe they could not escape the attention of the state’s apparatchiks. But the famous slogan, “Big Brother is watching you” was propaganda not reality. Big Brother might have wanted his minions to watch everyone 24/7, but they couldn’t.

Those two-way television sets, which Orwell christened “tele-screens”, were probably big and heavy machines like the TV sets of the time. So although Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist, Winston Smith, could never turn his telescreen off, he could hardly carry it around outside either. Microphones were small and portable enough to hide almost anywhere, but in one passage Smith realised he could get away from even those devices by heading to the countryside.² In fact, he was probably safe from technological surveillance anywhere outdoors, even in the city.

It is different today though. Smartphones can keep tabs on us much better than Orwell’s cumbersome tele-screens. But here’s the strange thing: no one is forced to have one or keep it switched on. Yet virtually everyone has a smartphone – why? Simple. People have been persuaded that smartphones are desirable. They have been taught to want them so much that they are willing to hand over large sums of money to acquire one of their own. When they get them, smartphone users share information about themselves (and their children!) online – often with complete strangers. No one seems to care any more about personal privacy.

This is a revolution, in fact more than a revolution. Whatever it is, why did it pass me by? Maybe I resisted the new tech for mundane reasons. For instance I would have to use my thumbs rather than my index fingers to work these things, and I am too old a dog to learn ‘new tricks’ at my age. Or perhaps I am just a Luddite.

I still bang away at my computer keyboard doing all the stuff everyone else does on their smartphones. So I remain tethered to technology. I send emails. I use social media. I talk to friends and relatives online. I buy from Amazon. Sitting at my desktop PC I can do all these things and more through the miracle of wifi. Indeed, this article you are reading now would be impossible without the Internet.

However that changes once I leave home. Outdoors is different. It is where I find nature. For me, nature equals freedom. I am fortunate in that I live in a fairly rural area. I go outside whether it is cold or hot. I stroll in the sunshine or the rain. I gaze up at the clouds in the sky. I paddle in the waves down by the sea. I listen to the sounds around me, whether birdsong or screeching seagulls. I do all this without ever being distracted or disturbed by the ‘ping’ from a smartphone. More importantly, nature itself is not disturbed.

As readers of my earlier piece on the Public Services Card will have guessed, I don’t care about being the subject of state surveillance. I assume that anyone who wants to know what I had for breakfast can find that out easily enough - whether or not I have a smartphone. (I have an old pay-as-you-go museum-piece. So I am contactable when I am out and about - if I remember to bring it with me.)

One day I hope to completely overcome my dependence on the Internet and computers. For now though I can avoid it all by going outside - into nature. That is the best reason I can think of for not having a smartphone.

1. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Penguin edition, London 2013), p. 235.

2. Ibid, pp. 142-3.