Technology vendors have long promoted emancipatory innovations by freeing people from repetitive tasks of the past. However, the advent of shared knowledge and augmented reality has led to digital dependence, where most people have become « digital zombies, » constantly glued to their screens. This digital addiction has become a major concern, but offers and testimonies to live without a mobile phone have emerged to combat this digital addiction. Fortunately, we still have the power to break free from this dependence and not be reduced to mere bipeds geolocated by their IP number.
E. Krieger
Emancipation, defined as ‘the action of freeing oneself from a bond, hindrance, state of dependence, domination, or prejudice,’ technology vendors have long promoted numerous innovations in this emancipatory domain. This perspective is even more tempting as no one misses the repetitive tasks that once charmed our ambiguous lives before the advent of micro-computing, mobile phones, and online commerce, where everything was much slower and less efficient, leaving us wondering how we managed essential tasks like:
- Declaring and paying taxes on time.
- Buying batteries, books, or gifts without leaving home.
- Accessing weather forecasts for the upcoming weekend.
- Sharing feasting photos or cat videos with friends.
- Discovering Jean-Claude Van Damme’s complete work.
We have wholeheartedly entered the era of shared knowledge and augmented reality. We can never thank enough the battalions of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers without whom we would still be in the Stone Age regarding communication and exchanges.
A world of digital zombies
However, the trouble is that in many respects, we have fallen from Charybdis to Scylla, with new servitudes replacing the old ones. To witness the progress of these new addictions, one only needs to see how almost all of us have become digital zombies, compulsively glued to our screens, seeking information, untimely messages, games, photographic or musical memories.
Similar to an inveterate alcoholic who proudly boasts, like Gérard de Nerval, of not having drunk anything for two days, we would almost brag about not having touched our smartphones for two hours.
Let’s admit right away that, in writing this article, I couldn’t free myself from the usual array of digital tools that facilitate all kinds of searches: quotations, definitions, biographies… I undoubtedly belong to this category of internet and mobile phone addicts.
A recent study by Deloitte sets the tone: the relationship between the French and their smartphones is described as fusion. A paragraph titled ‘When Passion Turns to Addiction’ indicates that 41% of French people admit to checking their phones in the middle of the night; 58% use their smartphones while driving, and 81% find this indispensable during family meals or gatherings with friends. And you, dear readers: where do you stand regarding these enthusiastic statistics?
Digital addictionology: a booming discipline
Digital addictionology has become a trendy discipline, as illustrated by the Wikipedia entry ‘Internet Addiction,’ which mentions cyber-dependence, cyber-addiction, or netaholism… To address this phenomenon, new offers have emerged, and others have adapted. By typing ‘Living without a mobile phone’ into our favorite search engine, we find more than 11,000 testimonials or commercial offers targeting these modern ascetics who take the unprecedented risk of being face to face with themselves and/or their families without any escape.
We are indeed facing a form of addiction without drugs. The ‘traditional’ dealers are thus replaced by telecom operators and the cartel of digital giants. The Uberization of society sometimes takes singular paths.
Homer, La Boétie, and Montherlant
In a previous essay entitled ‘Discourse on Voluntary Digital Servitude,’ I invited the reader not to resign themselves to being reduced to bipeds with a geolocated IP number. The injunction of Étienne de La Boétie: ‘Be resolved to no longer serve, and you are free’ applied to our digital addictions echoes Henry de Montherlant’s saying, ‘Freedom exists: it only requires paying the price.’
There is no fate in falling from Charybdis to Scylla or in its postmodern version, Scylla.com, which embodies cyber addiction in all its forms. Like Ulysses, we can navigate these two pitfalls so that our odyssey is not synonymous with a waking nightmare. The parallel with Homer’s work ends there, and one wonders, moreover, what the brilliant author of the Iliad and the Odyssey was fueled by to invent such extravagant characters and situations. Unless the character of Homer himself emerged from the imagination of a handful of psychedelic authors and precursors of lysergic acid diethylamide… but that’s a completely different story! »
Adapted from Krieger E. (2017), « De Charybde en Scylla.com », La Revue du Cube #13, « Emancipation », 5 Déc. 2017. Also published on: www.ikigai-colors.com/index.php/2023/08/01/de-charybde-en-scylla-com-2/
