I was replacing the LED energy efficient light bulb in my desk lamp, with a warm incandescent light bulb. The very same sorta bulb that is quickly being phased out by government regulations because it isn’t “green” enough. With the harsh blue light replaced with a candle like red glow, I was thinking about the purpose of TV and it all came together in the week or so since I have been monkeying around with a Librem 5.
I have been slowly working this phone into some usable shape for my un-standard life I live. TV, much like radio, was used to sell things to people, something I believe everyone can agree with. Bath soaps, beauty oils, muscle cars that gave you your youth back, younger looking skin and so forth. The TV shows just kept meat in the seats so we can get you to the next commercial break for disposable razors.
What do you think replaced TV? It’s pretty much dead now, as no one is buying the most current iteration of TV, cable or digital 500 channel whatever. (if you want some curious perspective, go to Youtube and watch commercials from the 80’s and 90’s and see what you aren’t seeing anymore. The tone is amazing)
At my gig, on breaks, I see people’s faces lit up and pupils dilated with the harsh LED glow of smart phone screens. I can understand that life today is better than it has been in the last 500 years but it’s still tough for many and getting tougher. These people seem to be self medicating by escaping into a world in their phone.
I realized I was doing it too when I’d go to bed late a night and make the mistake of opening up the Youtube app and suddenly thirty to sixty minutes was gone before I knew it. What did I look at? Stupid content that was sandwiched between commercials for whatever. If I was learning something, at least that wouldn’t be so bad. I opened the Youtube app just now and here are the videos I could watch if I wanted to:
** “Horse Grabbed Her By The Ponytail”*
** Youtube shorts*
** “Schools close across rural Japan as birth rate plummets”*
** “JUST IN: Trump Tells Citizens to ‘Drop Down And Pray’ Over Nuclear Fears”*
** “From Book To Trash Bin (ASMR)*
** “Kim Jong-un answers question from foreign journalists for first time”*
** “The friendship recession | Richard Reeves”*
** “Why Tipping Is So Out Of Control In The U.S.”*
** “Snoop Dogg welcomed to Scotland with bagpipes rendition of Still D.R.E.”*
** “18 year old girl with Catatonic Schizophrenia”*
(the bagpipes playing Still D.R.E. was pretty lit, as the kids say)
So I decided to remove the Youtube app and only access the service through a web app… It was harder to navigate, worked badly and wasn’t as smooth. I felt better but decided to take it one step further.
Enter the Librem 5, and realized this was a machine that wasn’t part of the bi-opoly of the big two smart phone providers that replaced TV. The battery life is terrible, the camera is really really rough around the edges and the learning curve is pretty steep, as is the case with all Linux based GUI’s. But you know what it doesn’t have?
That hypnotic, snappy loading time of these apps that keep your attention for another seven seconds that turns into seven days. I have a hunch that the reason these phone are so great in some functions and sucks in others is, it’s meant to keep selling things to the owners of the phones.
All that is great, but why is all of this important? On average, the life span for anyone in the Western world (anyone wealthy enough to buy a 2,000$ Linux phone) is 73.5 years for males and 79.3 years for females according to the CDC. When you lose thirty to sixty minutes a day as you fall into an app, like Alice falling into that deep hole that led to Wonderland, it adds up over time. Thirty minutes yesterday turns into two hundred and ten minutes this week. That’s eight hundred and forty minutes this month and ten thousand eight minutes this year.
In a year, with thirty minutes lost in these apps, you lose a whole week. Imagine if you self medicate with whatever apps you use to get by your twenty minute break or to make the unpleasant subway ride more bearable. Or worse, use the phone to escape life or your relationships.
For all the backers who haven’t yet gotten their phones from endless delays for whatever reason, for the poor performance and all the rough edges that will eventually be smoothed out, these phone do one thing right and that one thing is damn important. They break the hypnotic spell that robs a person of one thing they can’t get back, that is their time.
If your time is worth something to you, if you are tired of being told how to feel or what to think about world events, if you are worn out from being scared by the news, want to be there for the most important years with your family, consider this phone. It’s not perfect, but it’s a giant step in the right direction.
