Member-only story
Do you NEED your phone?
On the brink of extinction
Today I met a member of the most endangered species on the planet: a human being who has never owned a mobile phone.
I’m on board with using phones less, and getting as far out of the Facebook ecosystem as possible, but the idea of not owning a phone is challenging.
It would be one thing if he were an off-grid type living in a wind powered yurt. Or the denizen of some remote ethnic group as yet untainted by NatGeo. They might get away with phoneless-ness but how does a family man with a
9-to-5 manage?
Mapping memory lane
To surmise, I have to cast my mind back 20-plus years. When I was 17, in my first year of university, my friends and I made social arrangements via mini-whiteboards on our dorm room doors. As a 19-year-old exchange student in London I was advised to buy the A-toZ (and advised it was pronounced “A to Zed”) — a pocket-sized book of maps would take you to any street, alley, cul-de-sac, or station in the city. For months, my fingers traced its grid lines, pages smudging and dog-earring as I created routines.
