In yesterday's blog posting, I talked about a school teacher, in Tuscon, Arizona, who decided to resign, at the end of this past school year, because he could no longer stand the fact that the students in his classes weren't actually "there." Virtually all of them were, at least intermittantly, "on their phones," and not really "in class," at all. Despite the teacher's best efforts, his students essentially refused to return from "phoneland," and to be "present where they were." In consequence, the teacher exited his teaching career. As I said yesterday, I am sympathetic!
For those wanting to think more about this subject, there is a Pendle Hill Pamphlet with the following title: On Being Present Where You Are. It's Pamphlet #151, by a famous Quaker, Douglas Steere. Dated in 1967, Steere's Pamphlet was written long before there was an online world to seduce students, or anyone else, to leave the shared world that is our human "commons."
I have recently mentioned Pendle Hill Pamphlets in one of these daily blog postings, and I once again commend them to you. Pamphlet #151, updated to the world of today, would undoubtedly note that our intermittant departure from our shared world to an individual world, "online," has resulted in a kind of "spiritual crisis," as well as an "educational" crisis, and a "political" crisis.
An article in the Saturday-Sunday, May 25-26, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal alerts us to what The Journal calls "A Low-Tech Solution for Our Tech Addiction." The Yondr "pouch," pictured below, can enforce a "no phones" rule, without actually taking the phone away from those who are not supposed to be using them, but are supposed to be paying attention to what's happening where they physically are.
These Yondr pouches do work, by the way, just as the article in The Wall Street Journal describes:
It has come to this: We lack the willpower to stay off our phones, and we need physical barriers to stop us from using them. Enter Yondr, a maker of little bags for locking up your phone.
At schools, comedy clubs, concerts and other venues, the pouches cut off people from the screen without forcing them to surrender their phones.
Schools are struggling with children who can’t put down TikTok and YouTube, and lack in-person social skills. Musicians want their audiences to focus on them. Comedians want to stop joke theft or—even worse—have a joke that bombs go viral.
Some 25,000 people locked their phones into Yondr pouches at live shows in 2015, a year after the company launched, it says. By 2022, it was about six million. This year, the number of users is expected to surpass 10 million.
Here’s how it works: Once guests arrive at a show and present their tickets, Yondr workers or venue personnel ask them to silence their phones and place them in Yondr pouches. The staffers snap the bags shut, and guests take them inside.
I have personally experienced the use of Yondr pouches at a Bob Dylan concert, held in Oakland, California a year or so ago. The deployment of these Yondr pouches caused only a slight delay upon entering and leaving the concert. I was initially startled by the demand that I lock up my phone, and was then impressed, and I enjoyed the concert.
In the end, though, I think it's more important that we not try to address our "lack of willpower to stay off our phones" with technical fixes, including by way of Yondr pouches or any alternative possibilities.
If we don't ultimately harken to the fact that our shared and common world is where genuine pleasure, excitement, and meaningfulness reside, I think no "tech" solution is going to save us. Here is what Douglas Steere said, in 1967, in that Pendle Hill Pamphlet I mentioned. I think he is right:
I believe that in the period that lies ahead, there is no deeper challenge to Quakers [and I would say all of us] in their personal, spiritual, and social witness all over the globe than this issue of learning to be present where they are in their personal relationships and making their infinitesimal witness and effort to rouse men to dare to be present to each other. The issue of peace and war, the issue of reacial tensions, the issue of an educational breakthrough, the issue of our responsibility to contribute of the quickening of the relationships of the great world religions - all come down in the end to this daring to be present where we are (emphasis added).
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