A few nights ago, I had a dream in which I went out with some friends to a pub. In my dream my fellow pub-goers did not have known identities and I don’t remember what we discussed. I do remember that at some point I went to the restroom—even in dreams, nature calls. I did not take my purse with me and when I came back it was gone. Suddenly, all the “friends” in my dream had to go somewhere quickly and I was left in a panic.
Now, I am in a full-blown nightmare. I was in a panic because of my iPhone.
I even walk to my car and know that I cannot drive it because its key was in the purse too. But this does not upset me as much as the fact that I do not have my iPhone. I don’t think about credit cards or lost money. And, when I wake up, it is a relief that I must not replace my phone life.
What is my subconscious trying to tell me? Perhaps I need to sever this relationship that I slowly developed with my mobile appendage—because that is what is now, what a friend called a third arm. Because, without it, I could not enter the pub with the QR codes it shared about me, or I could not set the temperature in my house, monitor my workouts and health indicators, login to a whole number of websites that send me codes over it, get on a plane, pay with my credit card for any online purchases or, indeed, communicate with my sons and my real friends and colleagues.
My smartphone wove itself into the fabric of my life in ways I find both disturbing and relieving. There is much that I do not need to remember because my iPhone remembers it for me or lets me Duck-Duck-Go find the answers on the World Wide Web. Another friend calls his phone his hand brain—that complimentary circuitry network that picks up where your own circuit board reaches capacity.
While having additional brain power brings tremendous advantages, this growing dependency on my third arm sometimes feels like living in a bad dream.
Roberta Haar, professor of Foreign Policy Analysis and Transatlantic Relations at UCM