Delete The Internet
Election Special! (Almost nothing to do with the election)
Happy Friday!
And a warm welcome from what can only be described as a good day for a sauna. (🙏)
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor and cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel. In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I vote in elections. 🗳
Delete The Internet
Does anyone else feel like they pick up their phone more than they’d really like to?
🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋♀️😲🙋♂️🙋♀️🙋♂️
Okay, good. Because today’s story is the latest in a long-running series dedicated to neo-Luddite interventions aimed at reducing our addiction to technology, specifically the mobile phone.
(What? I told you my Election Special would have almost nothing to do with the election!)
I’ve shared many of my experiments in the past and, although I still use a few, none have worked for me in the long term:
No phone before noon ❌ Nice idea. Didn’t last.
Punkt MP02 dumbphone ❌ Didn’t have all the features I wanted.
Digital minimalism and apps like Freedom and Unpluq ❌ Great ideas… Easily forgotten or circumvented.
Delete Whatsapp ❌ Great! Definitely relieved me of some dependence… Obviously didn’t last and didn’t address my problem with the rest of the internet. (Side note: I wish you could manually archive apps on Android as you can on iOS; that’d make temporarily deleting mindsuckers like Whatsapp much less painful.)
Auto-redirect on timesink websites ❌ Fantastic for targeting distractions on my desktop computer; insufficient for mobile devices.
No phone data or internet at home ❌ Amazing! If only I lived in a Faraday cage…
Put SIM Card in a lockbox overnight ❌ Great for establishing both downtime and focus time in evenings and mornings. Tough habit to instill, especially when excited to communicate with other humans during those hours. Also doesn’t tackle daytime distractions.
Use a boring launcher ❌ Nice aesthetics; didn’t diminish the allure.
It’s almost as if I’m one puny human brain pitted against legions of the most deliciously capitalist human and neural network minds in Silicon Valley. Oh, wait…
Brief Interlude: Why Is This Important?
And why might any of us want to pick up our phones less often?
Here’s why reducing screen-dependence is so important to me:
During work hours, my phone draws focus and hijacks deep concentration, resulting in greater distraction and poorer outcomes.
During downtime, I get a million times more satisfaction from reading an enthralling book, playing outside in the awe of nature, catching up with beloved friends and family, or falling fast asleep.
What’s your why? Do you feel the same? Smashing — now read on!
The Search for Minimum Viable Technology
Frustrated with my inability to detach from the blue glow, this week I briefly flirted with buying the new Light Phone III. It looks fantastic, I love their minimalist principles and it’s currently on pre-order at half price.
But that half-price is still $399. Yeesh.
That seems like a lot to spend on a mobile device that won’t do everything I want from a mobile device, including expedition-grade maps and the astonishing ability to identify birds from their calls.
The Light Phone is wonderfully minimalist and distraction-free ✔, but for me it’s not viable; it doesn’t match how I want to use a mobile device ❌.
One of my Minimum Viable Technology principles is to use one tool for one task: a TV to watch TV, a radio to listen to radio, a stopwatch to set timers, a typewriter to type writing, and so on.
Clearly, smartphones violate that principle. They violate that principle SO HARD.
So I’m stuck. I really want a mobile device that can do the incredible things a smartphone does; I just don’t want a smartphone.
I’ve been becoming increasingly despondant that the device I’m looking for doesn’t exist — and never will. It’s all or nothing.
At least that’s how it seemed, until Tuesday, when I took a dip in the sea.
Sea Swim Epiphany
As I floated on the gentle waves, I had a minor revelation:
What if I applied the one-tool, one-task principle, not to the smartphone as a whole, but to the individual apps I install?
Smartphones are often described as a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ technology — but what I’d forgotten is that we get to choose the tools.
The tools on my device will be radically different to yours and yours from hers and hers from theirs because of all the different apps that we install.
Mine can connect to my bank, relocate me on an OS map, and identify wildflowers from a single photo. Yours can blow out candles, randomly call strangers, and track all the places you’ve done a poo — hey, no shame!
The apps that I install on my device not only mesh perfectly with my daily needs and nefarious intentions, but the vast majority also comfortably pass my one-tool, one-task rule.
There is actually only one app on my smartphone (and on yours) that violates the one-tool, one-task rule.
It’s one of the cornerstone apps that come pre-installed with every smartphone, one that (not coincidentally) the Light Phone excludes: an internet browser.
‘I Can’t Wait to Get Home and Browse,’ Said No One Ever
The purpose of an internet browser is (unsurprisingly) to browse the internet.
Although I occasionally use my browser for a specific task, most often, even as I’m opening the app, I have no idea what I’m about to get sucked into.
Sometimes it’ll be ‘half-read the sports news’, sometimes ‘scroll through Kottke.org for an indeterminate time’, sometimes ‘do Spangles’ — often, for no good reason, it’ll be all three.
That is exactly the addictive behaviour that I most want to end. There’s a reason why the verb ‘browse’ rarely makes it onto anyone’s list of ‘Things to Do Before I Die’.
It’s hard to accept that I am going to die. But it’s not hard to see that ‘I wish I’d spent more time online’ is unlikely to make it onto my rollcall of deathbed regrets.
Finding the Perfect Mobile Device
With a new emphasis on ‘one-tool, one-task’ apps, I can now see why none of my previous smartphone strategies worked for very long:
They either skirt around the discomfort of a total browsing ban (digital minimalism, website blockers, boring launchers);
Or they throw the whole baby out with the bathwater (no smartphone, no data, no SIM card).
Then it struck me: the device I’m looking for does already exist — it’s sitting on the table beside me right now.
My smartphone does everything I could ever hope for in a mobile device: maps, email, messaging, cool nature stuff, mobile 5G hotspot.
There’s only one little thing I need to do to bring it into perfect alignment with my minimum viable technology principles: delete the sodding internet browser.
From Opt Out to Opt In
Now then. I know what you’re going to say.
Deleting my browser might seem pretty inconvenient, but if I discover that I’m missing some critical function, then there’s nothing to stop me from adding more tools to my device.
I just need to make sure they are one-tool, one-task apps. Whatever it was that I wanted to do on my browser, there is indeed an app for that.
You see, most apps are nothing more than dressed up websites. HMRC, Greggs, and The Electrician’s Handbook are all available as apps. There’s even an app for Wimbledon 2024.
My previous strategies for limiting screentime haven’t worked because they’ve been based on creating ‘opt out’ rules: I can block specific websites, but the rest of the internet is always available to scroll by default.
Deleting my browser flips this into an ‘opt in’ policy: I can install an app to access one specific website, but the rest of the internet is not available to scroll by default.
And so, after my swim on Tuesday, I deleted the internet from my phone.
Three Days Later…
NOTHING BAD HAS HAPPENED.
I’ve confused the hell out of the operating system. If I click a link on my phone, it takes me to Coinbase, an app for cryptocurrency investments. I get a little kick out of this discombobulated behaviour.
I downloaded Wikipedia and rediscovered an app that helps me practice breathing. In… Hold… Out… Hold…
When something internetty occurs to me, I add it to a short list of things to look up when I’m back at my computer. Nothing on that list starts with the verb ‘browse’.
But the main thing that’s happened is that my phone feels less interesting. I’m finding myself slightly less likely to pick it up in moments when I have nothing else to do.
How long this will last, only time will tell. But, for now, it’s a landslide victory for digital liberation. (Election LOL)
~
p.s.: If you’d like to play along at home, make sure you delete all apps that trigger browsing behaviour. Remember the one-tool, one-task rule. For me it was only Firefox, but for you it might also include social media, Youtube or search engine apps like Google. Enjoy!
Three Tiny Big Things
(Okay, FINE. Here’s a little Election badinage.)
1. Tories Out?
Last night, shortly after the release of a chastening exit poll, I heard one Conservative MP describe his defeated party as, nevertheless, ‘the natural party of government’. 🤮
It was a presumptuous line of the utmost condescension, made all the more galling for being, historically at least, more truth than lie.
It’s hard for us Brits, let alone anyone else, to fathom how tight the grip of Conservative rule has been in England, especially southern, rural England.
It’s no exaggeration to say that, here, anything other than Tory rule is very much the exception.
In the Oxfordshire village where I grew up, the last non-Tory to win an election was the Liberal Edward Lessing, who won the Abingdon constituency by 254 votes in 1923.
Only one year later, after the collapse of the minority Labour government, Lessing lost his seat to the Tories by 4,312 votes. In my lifetime, the Conservative majority has never been less than 5,000.
One hundred years of uninterrupted Tory rule.
My adoptive home of Bournemouth fairs even worse. It has been represented by a non-Tory in only 15 years out of the last two centuries, and not at all since 1906.
In the last 70 years, the town has had precisely three (3) Members of Parliament: all white men. That doesn’t sound like a functioning democracy to me.
But this morning I awoke to the news that, in Oxfordshire, my family helped return our first Liberal Democrat MP for a century. Further south, Bournemouth is now Labour. Jessica Toale won my constituency, the first female MP to ever represent the town.
I’m not going to lie: after fourteen years, this result is a relief. Many of us will be frustrated that the Labour Party hasn’t done more, gone further, been more ambitious, but this still feels like progress.
2. Dunwich Dynamo
Every year, on a full moon weekend in July, thousands of people cycle a long way. A really long way.
The Dunwich Dynamo clocks in at 180km. That’s, like, so far.
Even I, as someone who’s helped organise Europe’s longest charity ride, have only ever cycled that far once before — and that was when I last did the Dynamo, back in 2014.
Here we all are, enjoying a pitstop at about half past one:
Oh sorry, did I not mention? It’s a night ride. Hence the need for a full moon.
Riding by moonlit, following a trail of red tail lights like fireflies is pure magic. Also magic is the friendship, camaraderie, and the open-all-night pubs and community halls.
This is all about the journey.
And then plunging your burning thighs into the sea.
So if you fancy doing something gloriously stupid with a perfectly pleasant summer weekend, get more info here and here.
(Pro tip: for the love of god, book the Southwark Cyclists coach back to London. In 2014, me and my friends got stung to the tune of £100 EACH for a taxi to Ipswich station.)
3. Man Friend
Did you know that legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company have a podcast? Of course they do.
On Friendship, with Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen is full of poetry and soppy moments with your best pals, but one line in particular stood out, around thirty minutes in:
Everyone talks to women about their emotional stuff: women talk to women and men talk to women. But man to man there seems to be a lot of pressure. So I’ve seen how difficult [male friendships] can be and how [men] can be a bit jealous of female friendships.
But sometimes I think the weight of everything is then on the women. Quite a few women say they’ve brought boyfriends for their male friends so they can talk to each other, rather than keeping on loading everything on the woman. […] It would be lovely for men to have more intimate friendships.
So next time you have a problem that needs talking through, why not take it to a man?
Thanks N.C. (👋) for sharing this with me!
Thank You
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As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support.
Big love,
dc:
That night ride looks great, although rather long. I.have so many thoughts regarding digital minimalism Ii don't really know how to respond, but with dispondence and procrastinatory anxiety, and a long lost of excuses as to why I'M different and why I NEED these apps l.. fully aware that's predominantly the addition justifying itself. Sigh.
Even easier - just leave the browser on your phone, but don't use it unless you have to. They have their uses. I use my laptop browser a lot (that's how I am reading your post) but on my phone maybe 90% of its use is to avoid having the dreadful Facebook app installed. Willpower!