RIP iPhone 6s

I recently finally traded in my 8 year old iPhone 6s, for a current model 16. 

My 6s served me very well for all those years, & I was really trying to keep it going until the proverbial wheels fell off. It was only within the last 6 months that the battery life became very short (had to keep it plugged in a lot), & I began noticing a lag in performance. I had 128 GB of storage, the most you could get at the time, & I had just recently come close to maxing it out. My new phone has 512GB, so it should let me add 10's of thousands of more pics/video in the coming years. 

Eventually, A.I. will likely allow us to reconstruct (perhaps in VR) whole scenes or even chapters from our life based on our accumulated digital photo libraries. Anyway, I'll save my tech predictions for another post...

It's crazy how attached we've become to our technology, especially smartphones. I'll have a mini panic attack in the car if I think I left it at home. I have always felt that my computers & phone devices were extensions of my nervous system, tools to extend my consciousness & abilities. 

Sometimes, I'll look at the phone & think what a mystifying creation it is... It's almost like magic when you closely consider the complexities of it's engineering & functionality. We carry around this light screen that allows us to communicate & even share thoughts like a form of telepathy, create or appreciate art, capture moments in time, and navigate our reality, while also giving us access to the sum of all human knowledge right in our hand. It's unbelievable!

Now, with the addictive nature of gaming & social media, our devices have become "attention prisons" of endless scrolling and clicking. Our brain is completely hooked on the interaction with the screen. It's not all brain-numbing nonsense, but the craving for the interaction of the mind with the digital devices is a psychological imperative that is too strong for most people to resist.

I try to intentionally disconnect from my phone- to read a book, pay attention to the taste of my food, play with my kids, enjoy the rare moments of silence, a chance to talk to my wife without the little gremlins hounding us (also rare nowadays), or just be present in whatever I'm doing. I have a meditative mindset, and try to maintain a sense of conscious awareness in each moment. The phone is an almost irresistible temptation, but it's vitally important to take time & experience the sensorium of "real life". 

We also try to limit the kids' screen time, because we realize how addictive it is. I see kids glued to their phones, but then so are adults now. I want to help my kids to be able to be aware & mentally resilient enough to experience life directly, by disengaging from electronic media periodically.

So, as I continue on with newer & better hardware, our technology is evolving within our lifetimes, as biology as evolved through the millennia. It's truly an amazing time to be alive as so much change & novelty is taking place in our world. With how crazy things are, I just hope humanity can keep going & not destroy itself before we reach a more stable stage of species development. My phone delivers me all kinds of news that makes me nervous about our chances, but I have to stay optimistic, for the sake of my children the human race as a whole.