I’m Tired of Being on the Network
Now the smartphone is a tax. I get to choose my tax collector be it Apple, Samsung, Google, Nothing, Fairphone, but I don't get to choose whether to pay. In Denmark I'm expected to carry the Aula app for school, the Rejsekort app for trains, MitID to prove to the state that I am me, and e-Boks for official messages from the government and its authorized friends. I need the thing at the airport, at the hotel, at the gym. All of this, I'm told, is a choice. I "choose" to take part in the digital economy.
It isn't a choice in any meaningful sense. It's compliance. It's the one physical counter open Tuesdays from 10 to 12, and the ticket machine that no longer takes cash. And the offline option exists the way the wheelchair ramp exists at certain train stations: installed after the fact, satisfying a regulation, pitched at an angle no wheelchair on earth can climb. We are all expected to pretend grandma can make it up, and to act only mildly surprised when we find her at the bottom again.
Son point de vue résonne avec moi. Je me suis depuis longtemps protégé des notifications, des apps et des publicités, mais l'addiction au smartphone reste forte. Les quelques notifications qui restent sont à la fois redoutées et attendues.
Extraits cités issus de ce lien visité le , crédits: Mat Duggan