- Do you think that your phone is a tool
or do you think it's an instrument?
Now I know it sounds weird but think about it.
When you go out to buy a new phone you're like ah,
I really wish it took better pictures and so
you go get a thing that solves that problem better
than the thing you had before but what if that's all wrong?
You're thinking of your phone like this thing,
like a hammer but what if it's not like that.
What if it's more like this thing (ukulele playing),
an instrument?
(calming music)
I've been obsessed with phones for like 20 years,
actually oh God, 22 years.
My first phone was a Mountain Dew extreme
network pager when I was in high school.
Oh, God.
Okay, anyway, I've been obsessed with phones for 20 years.
I've been writing about 'em for like 15 years
and in that time I have learned a lot about phone specs.
The Snapdragon processor and megapixel
that and color gamut and blah, blah, blah, blah.
I do believe that specs matter but I also think that we
probably spend way too much time arguing about them.
Specs make your phone a better tool if you've got a better
camera, it's going to take better photos.
But dealing with a tool is you use it to solve a task
and then you put it away and then you get a different
tool to solve another task so the best hammer in the world
isn't gonna help you cut down a tree.
Just like the best, most beautiful screen in the world
isn't gonna help you if you drop your phone.
You might need a different tool for that.
So what you wanna do when you're picking out a phone
or any technology is don't think of it as just a single
thing to solve a problem, think of it as something
that you kind of need to have a relationship with.
Look, the tool thing, it's not a very good metaphor
but I think there's a better metaphor,
one that can help you have an actually good relationship
with your phone and hell, with most tech.
And that metaphor is the one I said earlier.
Think of your phone as a musical instrument.
I think the first thing that happens when you think
about your phone as an instrument is that you tend
to care about it more, the way that a musician
cares about their instrument, it's not some foreign
thing to you that's like being inflicted upon you.
It's actually something that you participate in,
that you actually enjoy using.
The first time you pick up any musical instrument,
you suck at it, I mean you are deeply, deeply bad
at playing that thing and you know what,
the same is true with phones.
You have to learn how to use it and you
can get better with it over time.
So if it feels awkward and annoying to you,
you can just practice with it.
The other thing about instruments is you have to keep
them in tune, they don't just work all the time
without a little bit of care and maintenance.
Look at your storage,
if the thing seems slow maybe it's full.
Look at your battery and we've learned
with the iPhones if the battery is kind of old
and crappy the phone's gonna slow down.
I hate to say it but Android apps tend to have more crappy
little tentacles that sneak out into the rest of the OS
and getting rid of the weird, crappy games
that you downloaded which you maybe don't need.
Just periodically cleaning stuff up can really
help keep the thing running fast.
The other thing, we could go back
to what I was saying earlier about specs.
If you think of your phone as an instrument then specs
sort of like I don't know it's weird,
is there such a thing as the best guitar?
There's lots of different kinds and they make different
kinds of music so why should you be worried about
necessarily having the quote unquote best phone.
The truth is that there's really no such thing.
Now, if you're anything like me, you're probably thinking
you know this metaphor isn't that great, it's kind of broken
down, actually yeah that's what metaphors do,
they break down, words have got a wide array of meaning, so.
I don't know instruments can be used to just measure things
and tools can be used to make beautiful, amazing art.
Are you gonna use your phone to just consume junk,
just endlessly scroll Twitter and feel bad
about what your friends are doing on Instagram?
Would you sit and listen to really
crappy music that you hate?
No, what you do on your phone should make you feel good
or if it's work stuff it should make you feel productive.
And here's maybe the most important point.
If you really think about your phone as an extension
of your mind, then the things you do on your phone
are an extension of what you are and who you are.
The technology doesn't absolve you from your actions.
So if you're using your phone to leave hateful comments
or say hateful things, or just generally be terrible
on the internet, that's you doing it,
it's not some separate thing.
You should use your phone to improve humanity,
not make it worse and the same way that a musician
doesn't pick up a guitar to like make you feel like crap,
they do it to make music that makes people feel good.
The metaphor of an instrument is more useful
because it makes you feel differently about the phone.
You should think differently about it or more importantly,
you should have a different attitude
when you're using your phone.
As long as we're talking about metaphors and words
and whatever, here's one for ya.
Phone, it comes from the Greek for voice
and it's for communicating with other
people but more than other people,
it's for communicating with culture.
So when you play a game on your phone it's an instrument
for experiencing a new kind of art and when you take
a selfie with your phone, it's an instrument for putting
a picture of yourself out in the world.
Phones are pieces of culture that also create culture.
If you treat your phone like a tool, like a hammer,
you're just going to pound nails with it.
You're going to dehumanize the person
on the other end of the phone.
But if you treat it like an instrument,
you're going to recognize that it creates culture,
that it has a place in our culture and so do you
because that's what instruments do.
And I'm really curious, you know this is my metaphor
but maybe you have a better idea of how we should
think about these phones so that they feel better
in our lives, please let me know down
in the comments and we'll have a chat.