If all goes according to plan, in April of next year, thousands of people will receive a package containing a device called the Light Phone 2. The project was funded on Indiegogo, and many Light Phone customers will have been waiting for an entire year by then. It’s the second iteration of the device, but by modern standards, the phone will be primitive, with a colorless screen and none of the familiar apps. This lack of functionality is spun as a benefit; the Light Phone is marketed as “a phone that actually respects you.” It’s a manifestly absurd series of words, but I suspect more than a few of us understand perfectly what it’s supposed to mean.
If you’re one of those people, it seems likely that your smartphone doubles as your alarm clock, meaning it’s the very first thing you hear every day, rousing you from your sleep before spilling a night’s worth of inbound information into view the moment it is silenced. From that point, it is hungry for attention: In the bathroom, in the kitchen and at the table, it is a constant accomplice, as helpful or unhelpful as you want or allow it to be.
In the car, it is a navigator, a radio, a nagging distractor and a ready accessory to manslaughter; at work, it is both a vigilant assistant and an eager fellow shirker. It funnels all types and degrees of information through a few common interfaces, supplying a delirious new channel alongside your inner monologue: An important security update regarding your account. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you. Reminder: Call back the eye doc. The identity of the Golden State Killer was discovered using a genealogy database, investigators said. Your credit score has changed. Three missed calls from “SCAM LIKELY.” One missed call from “BOSS’S BOSS.”
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