Seminar Reflection

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

This week's reading reminds me of an accident in this term. One day, I was in the underground station and waiting for the tube. It was the Southwark Station in Jubliee line, which has a unique design. There are slide doors on the platform. Then the tube is coming, and I took a step on. I want to take out my phone, but somehow my phone dropped, it did not fall on the ground, but it dropped and rolled until it meets the little gap between the platform and tube. Gone. :)

Staff told me that the Jubliee line would work for the whole weekend in 24 hrs, and the slide doors only opened when the tube has come. If I want to open it right now, that will shut down the whole system. In which I have to live without my phone for three days.

I have group meetings on the weekend and presentation on Monday. On that day, I found our meeting's location based on my memory. I told my group members if they want to connect me, they can send emails. Lost connection with all my friends and family; without my phone, I cannot access the chat App on desktop. Also, I cannot set the alarm in the morning.

I realized how the smartphone controls my life. They are not machines here to serve me; they are living requirements.

The reading also reminds me that kids who born after 2010, they probably would not get a chance to see a telephone at home. When I was a child, having a role plays with my sister. We like to gestures a "six" beside our ears, pretend we are calling to each other. Children age like my nephew, around eight, what would they do to represent the telephone? Or will they think it equal to the smartphone?

It seems like the world is becoming meanless. Thinking is meaningless; curiosity is meanless, reciting is meanless because everything we want to know could be got in less than one second. When everything in our lives is tapping and swiping, then life is meanless.