THE DOZENfrom Egg Strategy Curiosity Killer

I just got a new phone. I love it. Everything seems totally seamless now. I can stay connected to the people I love, the work I do and have access to all the information that I "need" whenever I want. The sheer scope and power of this phone was heightened when I discovered an old Sony Discman in a closet I was de-cluttering in a new year spree. Man, that thing felt amazingly old. It played 1 CD and was completely indescructible and ENORMOUS.  I was blown away by the realization of what my phone could do in comparison.  Then I saw this comment about smart phones in an online article I was reading yesterday:

No single other device has been associated with such a wholesale deterioration of a national culture, lack of ability to survive without stimulation or titulation, destruction of the strength to sustain solitude and demonstrate self-sufficiency and loss of resourcefulness to meet even the most minor challenge. We have become a nation of infantile, sensation hungry, distraction-crazed muppets with the attention spans of gnats on mephedrone and a sense of entitlement dwarfed only by our petulant complaints if we don't get what we desire immediately, whether we deserve it or not.

Then I came across this piece in the British newspaper The Telegraph about obsessive smart phone users who are hearing "phantom vibrations" because they are so fixated with checking for messages and updates.

All this made me stop - maybe I need to reframe this new phone thing a little.  It has to serve me, not me it. It needs to feed my curiosity, not curb it. It needs to help me be laser focused, not a "distraction crazed muppet".  Maybe my new years resolutions need to extend to a few rules about this phone...