Hang Up For Good

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Good evening, and welcome to the programme. I'm Penelope Hartwell, and tonight we're asking whether the smartphone, the slab of glass that ate the last twenty years, is on its way out.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: What replaces it, if anything? And if it goes, do we get our attention back, or just find a new way to lose it?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: My guests are Pastor Cole, who tells me he's spent the last few months reading up on all this for his congregation.

Pastor Cole: Evening, Penelope. I'm glad to be here, and I promise I've done my homework.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Boomer Bill, retired union man, who has strong feelings.

Boomer Bill: Phones are garbage. Next question.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: And Arthur Sullivan, who joins us from what I'm told is his usual seat.

Arthur: Penelope! Penelope, you've a voice like a warm bath, did anyone ever tell you that. Hello to everyone at home, and hello to the lads at the bar, I can see you, Declan.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Lovely. Pastor Cole, let's start with you. Is the smartphone really ending?

Pastor Cole: Not tomorrow, no. But the folks building these things are pretty open that they want to move past the screen in your pocket.

Pastor Cole: You've got glasses with cameras and little displays in the lens, earbuds you talk to, watches doing more every year. The idea is the computer sort of melts into what you're already wearing.

Boomer Bill: Glasses with a camera. So now the creep at the gas station is filming me with his face.

Pastor Cole: Well, Bill, that's a fair concern, and it's one the companies haven't answered well yet.

Boomer Bill: It's not a concern. It's a fact. I've seen 'em.

Arthur: I had a pair of glasses once. Lovely glasses. Tortoiseshell. I sat on them at my cousin Fintan's wedding and I've never been the same, Penelope.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: I'm sorry to hear that, Arthur. Did they have a camera in them?

Arthur: No, they had my eyes in them. That was the whole point of them. You've lost me now.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Pastor, what about the gadgets with no screen at all? A pin, a pendant, a little box you talk to?

Pastor Cole: Those had a rough start. A couple of them came out with a lot of fanfare a while back and folks returned them in droves. Too slow, too warm, and they couldn't do half of what they promised.

Pastor Cole: But the AI assistants underneath have gotten a whole lot better since. So the thinking now is, you don't open twelve apps, you just ask for what you need and it handles it.

Boomer Bill: I don't talk to machines.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Bill, I believe you told our producer before the show that you ask your speaker for the ball scores every morning.

Boomer Bill: That's different.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: How is it different?

Boomer Bill: It's the Steelers.

Arthur: I talk to my phone all the time. I tell it I love it. It doesn't say anything back, but I can tell, Penelope, I can tell.

Pastor Cole: Arthur, I mean this kindly, but that might be the most honest thing anybody's said about phones in years.

Arthur: Thank you, Father.

Pastor Cole: Pastor.

Arthur: Thank you, Pastor Father.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Let's go further out. There are companies putting chips in people's brains. Pastor, is that where this ends up?

Pastor Cole: For some folks, it's already doing real good. There are people with paralysis moving a cursor just by thinking, and that's a blessing, plain and simple.

Pastor Cole: Where I'd slow down is the jump from helping a man who can't move his hands to selling it to a teenager so he can scroll faster. Those aren't the same thing, and we ought to be honest about that.

Boomer Bill: Nobody's putting a chip in my head.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: I don't believe anyone's offered, Bill.

Boomer Bill: Good. Let 'em try.

Arthur: Would it know what I was thinking? Because I'd feel sorry for it, honestly. It's a mess in there. Like the back of a taxi.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Bill, you clearly think smartphones were a mistake.

Boomer Bill: Worst thing that ever happened. Worse than the designated hitter.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: What specifically?

Boomer Bill: Everybody's staring down. Nobody shakes your hand. Kid at the hardware store couldn't make change for a twenty. Had to ask his phone.

Pastor Cole: Now, the change thing, Bill, that's more the register than the phone.

Boomer Bill: It's the phone. Everything's the phone.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: And yet, Bill, I can see one sticking out of your shirt pocket right now.

Boomer Bill: That's for emergencies.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: It lit up four times while you were talking.

Boomer Bill: My granddaughter sends me pictures of the dog. That's an emergency.

Arthur: Ah, show us the dog, Bill. Go on. I'm begging you.

Boomer Bill: Later.

Arthur: I'll hold you to that, Bill, I'll hold you to that like a pint.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Pastor, there's a movement going the other way. People buying deliberately dull phones. Calls, texts, maybe a map.

Pastor Cole: Dumbphones, folks call 'em. And it's real, especially with younger people, which surprised me. Kids in their twenties picking up flip phones on purpose.

Pastor Cole: A lot of schools have gone phone-free during the day too, and the teachers I've talked to say the hallways sound different. Kids actually talk at lunch.

Boomer Bill: Flip phones. We had those. Then we threw 'em out for this junk. Now they want 'em back. Make up your minds.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: So you'd approve, Bill?

Boomer Bill: No. They're doing it to look cool. It's a costume.

Pastor Cole: Bill, does it matter why they're doing it, if it helps them?

Boomer Bill: Yes.

Pastor Cole: Fair enough.

Arthur: I had a flip phone. You could snap it shut on someone. Very dramatic. Like hanging up on the Pope.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Have you ever hung up on the Pope, Arthur?

Arthur: Not that he'd admit.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: The question a lot of listeners wrote in about is whether we can go back to living in the moment. Concerts without a sea of screens. Dinners where nobody checks anything.

Pastor Cole: Some places are forcing it. There are venues that lock your phone in a little pouch at the door, and you can only open it in the lobby.

Pastor Cole: And folks come out of those shows saying it was the best concert they'd been to in years. They just watched it, instead of filming it to never watch again.

Boomer Bill: Back in my day you went to a concert, you watched the concert. You wanted a picture, you bought a T-shirt.

Arthur: I don't need a pouch. I've lost my phone at every concert I've ever been to. That's living in the moment, Bill, that's natural.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: How many phones have you lost, Arthur?

Arthur: Counting the one in the river, or not counting the one in the river?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Not counting the river.

Arthur: Nine. Ten with the river. Eleven if you count the one Declan says he never had, which, Declan, I know you've got it.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Pastor, is it the device, or is it us?

Pastor Cole: It's both, I think. These things are built by very smart people whose job is to keep you looking. That's not a conspiracy, that's the business model.

Pastor Cole: But I can't blame the phone for the fact that I check it in the pew before service. That's on me, and I've had to repent of it more than once.

Boomer Bill: See, he admits it. Phones are the devil.

Pastor Cole: Now, I didn't say that, Bill.

Boomer Bill: You were thinking it.

Pastor Cole: I was thinking I need a better hymnal app, if I'm honest.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: So if glasses or earbuds replace the phone, Pastor, does that fix the problem or just move it closer to our eyeballs?

Pastor Cole: That's the right question. If the screen's in your glasses, you can't even put it face down on the table. The distraction's just sitting on your nose.

Pastor Cole: On the other hand, some folks argue a good assistant means you look at a screen less, not more. You ask, it answers, you go back to your life. We'll see which way it breaks.

Boomer Bill: It'll break the bad way. It always breaks the bad way. Ask anybody who bought an electric car.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: We weren't discussing electric cars, Bill.

Boomer Bill: Somebody should be.

Arthur: I'd wear the glasses. I would. If they told me where I left my coat. That's all I'd want from the future. Where's me coat, Arthur, it's on the chair. Beautiful.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: That's quite a modest vision of the future, Arthur.

Arthur: Modest men are the happiest, Penelope. My mother said that. Or my uncle. One of them was in a coat. Hang on, what were we on?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Living in the moment.

Arthur: Right. I'm all for it. Brilliant. Absolutely. What moment is it?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Bill, let me put something to you. You say phones ruined human connection. But you just told us your granddaughter sends you pictures every day.

Boomer Bill: Yeah.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Before smartphones, would you have seen that dog daily?

Boomer Bill: She lives in Phoenix.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: So, no.

Boomer Bill: I'd have gotten a Christmas card.

Pastor Cole: Bill, I think that's a beautiful thing, honestly. The tool's not all bad. It's how much of us it gets.

Boomer Bill: I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm saying it's mostly bad and the dog is good.

Arthur: The dog is good. To the dog, everybody. Raise them up.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Pastor, ten years from now. Is there a smartphone in my pocket?

Pastor Cole: My honest guess, Penelope, there's still something in a lot of pockets, but it's quieter. More of the work gets done by voice, by glasses, by things you barely notice.

Pastor Cole: And I think more folks will choose to unplug on purpose, the way some folks keep a Sabbath. Not because they have to. Because they found out what they were missing.

Boomer Bill: Ten years from now I'll be dead and I'm fine with it.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: That's a little bleak, Bill.

Boomer Bill: No phones in the ground. Perfect.

Arthur: Bill, you're not to die, I won't allow it. You've to show me the dog first.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Arthur, your prediction.

Arthur: In ten years, Penelope, I'll have lost twenty more phones and found maybe four. And I'll be happy, because a man without a phone is a man at the bar actually listening to his friends.

Pastor Cole: You know, Arthur, that's not bad theology.

Arthur: I'm a deep man, Pastor Father. I just keep it in a shallow glass.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Final word before we go, Bill. Anything positive to say about where technology's headed?

Boomer Bill: The dog pictures load faster now.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: I'll take it. That's all for tonight. Thank you to Pastor Cole, Boomer Bill, and Arthur Sullivan.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: If you've listened to all of this on your phone, well done for finishing. Do put it down for a bit. Good night.

Arthur: Good night, Penelope. Declan, I know you have it.