What has the world become if everyone is covered by phones?
In 2015, during my third semester of university, a moment occurred while walking to class that forever shaped the rest of my life. It made me question everything and how technology will shape the future and our lives.
I wrote the blog below over 9 years ago. I have left it pretty much as it was then with micro-tweaks for clarity and I intentionally left some of the cringe in there to show the growth. An article that is more relevant now than when I wrote it. An article I imagined releasing alongside Between Human Hearts which I also began conceptualizing around that time. The bubbling of technology in my psyche began when I watched the movie, Her by Spike Jonze in 2013. Life took me on a different path with entrepreneurship, moving to Hollywood, and publishing two other books first. Unbeknownst to me, this article became the skeleton for many ideas presented in the third book of my trilogy. This book was started before Hert and Paint and also took a long time to be released to the world, so long in fact, it felt like infinity.
Phone Blankets, we live in a cold world, a scary world, but we allow the blankets of our phones to keep us warm. This warmth allows us to live within the confines of our happiness without realizing our ignorance of reality shifting towards isolation. A world of loneliness despite being branded as both social (media) and the ease of connection. We long for authenticity but are fed the artificial.
Let me bring you into the world of Phone Blankets…
I arrived on campus and proceeded to get to class as the sun started to reach its highest point. With the immense amount of stairs that my school has, I already felt myself sweating. As I’m walking I begin to observe my surroundings and appreciate the clear blue sky weather often taken for granted in the city of San Diego. Then I looked at a girl headed my way whose beauty was covered up. I don’t mean covered up by layers of makeup either. It was by that of the glare from her cellphone. She never even bothered looking up to see where she was walking as people dodged her. Saddened by this brief moment, I continued with my day where I saw countless others staring at their phones. People sitting at the same table yet no type of human-to-human interaction besides reaching over the table to hand off their phones; having their friends see a picture, video, or post of some kind on their devices, which leads to giggles and then silence once more.
Shaken up by these occurrences, this day more than ever, I finally got to my class. I sat down next to someone, and immediately, started a conversation which for the most part was static. In the brief seconds of silence between us, their phone is immediately unlocked to check notifications.
Is there a notification others get in real life that displays loneliness, to which they can reply with actual communication?
I understand the notion that technology revolutionizes how tasks are done, allows us to maintain relationships with those across the web, and enhances our lives in various other ways.
Our world is surrounded by touch. The very screens of our phones are made to maneuver with touch. Tablets are becoming the way we read books so there are no longer pages to touch. Laptops are now integrating similar technology as tablets so rather than using the touchpad/mouse, now it’s a screen you touch. The interaction that was once human touch is being replaced with artificial touch. Whether conscious or not, this creates a conflict internally for communication, it is no longer talking, it is reading from a news feed.
We’ve established a hunger for the news of friends, family, and acquaintances to discover all that there is to “know” about how and what they are doing. Rather, most social workings are used to portray images of themselves as perfect because that is what has become of social media. Essentially, social networks are merely an illusion of the inner workings of individuals who don’t want to be preyed on or judged. I would also say that there are two extremes, those that establish this mirage of an ideal image and those that are blatantly expressive of their feelings when it is oftentimes for attention that they cannot obtain in their daily lives.
The irony is that most terms in this realm are created to replace the original meanings such as the word social. How is it that what is supposed to be social keeps people silent from those a few feet away from them? How is it that even when people are talking… it revolves around the theme of what they have seen, heard, and done on social media? In the age of information, most spew worthless information that fills up the social circles; filling it to the brim yet never escaping the line.
The barriers we place around ourselves in this world limit us more than the socially structured ones already in place. To walk in today’s society and take note of your surroundings is rare. To talk in today’s society to a stranger is rare. If we do, more often than not we are looked at as crazy, absurd, weird, etc. You’re looked at as those things only because you want to understand someone else and communicate with them. Those that lack confidence, those that are hesitant of failure never quite get to that point of risking it because they would rather play it safe.
This is where the Phone Blankets concept comes in — take yourself back to your childhood, and let your imagination take hold of this moment…
The world is a cold place, a scary place, filled with monsters, zombies, and ghosts, that are all around you, in your room, you jump into your blanket and cover your head, close your eyes, and imagine that it is all gone, disappeared, you take yourself to a happy place, a place where you can finally feel safe. This occurs in our everyday society where the monsters are those “unlike” you, the zombies are those walking around “mindless,” and ghosts are the fears that “appear” real but are illusions to the mind. We go about our day-to-day lives protecting ourselves from the harsh realities of the world, where we dive into our social pools, and remain drowned in useless information that does not lift us beyond the surface.
We’ve been programmed to escape what is awkward by pulling out our phone blankets where we can temporarily escape the tension. We walk around with our heads down looking at our phones where we project a force field from the bullets of words. We walk around with our heads down looking at our phones where we close the door and project a sign that says “do not disturb” but ironically, our minds aren’t getting “busy.” We literally become cell-ibate.
E.T. once said, “Phone home,” and the generations that grew up with this movie, might have taken it in a literal sense. Home is representative of comfort, heart, and a place of safeness, their phone being just that. Even E.T. wanted to go back to his planet, where he belonged, where he felt connected with his people.
Connection is the foundation of humans, of everything. Most choose to remain connected technologically more than with others. Most cannot live without their phones due to the dependency of being conjoined to them at all times. We remain plugged into our phones as they drain us of our charge simultaneously as we do to it. Being that I grew up in a time where I got the best of both worlds, before technology and while it advances to levels never deemed possible. This has caused me to be more conscious of the negative effects technology brings to us as human beings. Where younger generations are bombarded with devices that start with i instead of iMagination.
My goal and overall vision as a person is… To Connect The Disconnected.™
Whether that is to bring people back to the human foundation, where love is more meaningful than a like, where you can add a friend in real life, where being connected with nature is valued and not just for photos to upload, where people can see through the filters of society to take note of what beauty truly is.
Creativity is the connection of two or more things into one. The connection of people with nature due to the fact we should be one with nature, to connect human interaction back to its inception where there are no barriers of race, gender, economic status, or sexual preference; being as one, human beings. To connect with ourselves, to become one, and truly understand ourselves.
We are all connected, we are all energy, and I strongly hold faith that we don’t wait until we get to one percent to take action, to plug ourselves back into reality: to awaken, fold the blanket, display gratitude, and embrace the feelings we are taught to numb. It’s no coincidence, that the word phone has one in it.
Phone Blankets is a term that I came up with as a metaphor for how people love to “cover” themselves from social situations like a child would when they feel fear. As the years have passed, anxiety has become a pressing obstacle in most people’s everyday lives and how people live their lives. The logo above is something I created to show this simple idea. The red blanket (or rectangle) covers only the words, Phone Blank.
Phone Blank, as if to say, a phone makes the mind blank, it numbs the mind and reduces the need for critical thinking. When you’re covered by your phone, you’re a blank (almost dull) character within this reality. I chose baby blue as the background to express the softness or potential wonder (much like the sky) we could have if we decided to live outside of that or at the very least… look up. Red usually signifies danger, so that’s a warning to the mind, that your phones could be that if you allow it to consume you.
Don’t get me wrong, almost 10 years later, phones aren’t all bad. There is endless potential in the ability to use phones, social media, digital numbers, and pixels, to shape your physical reality. You can find love, you can find companionship, you can find avenues for prosperity, it’s all there for us through the codes… it’s just up to us — to code it to our liking.
Over the last 8 years, the finishing of Between Human Hearts, I’ve come to understand things from an elevated perspective. It’s all about the intention. There’s value in the reasoning behind your use of any tool within this reality.
You can use it or it will use you. You can consume it or it will consume you. You can shift it or it will manipulate you. You can hack it or it will trojan horse you. You can code it or it will program you.
The internet is our main source of information and regardless of your mental fortitude, it shapes you. The thoughts, if you allow them to marinate, become things within your reality. The pixels shift your worldview and perspectives on life. We fill our boredom with content to feel content. We love the comfort of laying on our beds all day—under warm blankets—on our phones or watching TV, but to do it endlessly would rot you.
Humans are touch starved, suffering from the hunger of touch, we long for the feeling(s) oftentimes without realizing it. We may even act unorthodox or sporadic in search of that feeling. From the womb, we’re surrounded by the warm embrace and once you’re born, it’s instinctual to cry out for touch.
The simple touch of a hand, shaking a hand, hug of a friend with a hello, or a kiss from a lover or family… all things we’ve been doing for centuries. We tend to forget or allow the awkward(ness) to castrate that much-needed element in human interaction. A culture that fades with internet trends causes things that were once normal to become blurred. Society has become reluctant to allow us to express ourselves and find that true joy in human interaction(s). Touch is what gives us oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine; it reduces stress, anxiety, depression, and even helps us sleep better. As a community, we need to pursue more frequently positive touch within our daily lives to enhance our worldview. There should be no reason that in a more connected world, we’re lonelier than ever before.
“Just like we crave food when we are hungry, or crave sleep when we are tired, so we crave touch when we are lonely—for, at least historically, to be alone is to be exposed and vulnerable. When someone is out of our social orbit, we do not say that we are out of sight, but out of touch; and we feel that we ought to reach out and make contact.”
— Neel Burton, Psychology Today
There has to come a time in life when you face the cold. You allow the randomness of life to play out. You allow yourself to play and write your script. The cold is something you can adapt to and feel within your body. With the digital world, the escapism, we tend to numb ourselves to other people’s feelings creating a darker void within us. There’s light beyond the screen. There’s light beyond the black mirror… and that light can be you.
The light that lets go of the security of a blanket and chooses to feel what life is like in the outside world.
Love,
Erik De La Cruz.