When More is Less

All the tech I use, just to try using less tech.

Nokia 2660 Flip

I've been using this phone for I think soon a year. It has it's problems -- if you text too much with the same person (and I'm really not talking a lot) it freezes and you won't recieve or be able to send text at all without deleting the conversation that was overflooded and restarting the phone. I've tried to solve it but it seems unsolvable, and I don't think the rest of my fellow Nokia 2660 Flip phone owners text enough or use the internet enough to discuss the problem there, so I'm not even sure other people have the same issue. Maybe I'll trade the phone in the future if this becomes too bothersome, but it's not right now at least. I like the sleek design that feels pretty modern and doesn't stand out too much (I am in fear of looking goofy with my phone, lol); the only design choice I dislike is the buttons clearly being designed for someone who can't read small letters, giving a bit of a grandma vibe. Otherwise it works fine and as you'd expect. I used to abuse snake on it but has grown kind of tired of that. The camera isn't great, but we'll get to that.

As for what it means to own a "dumb phone" (please don't call her that....she's not dumb, she just gets overwhelmed when she gets a lot of texts. who doesn't) I find it equivalent to having spa day for your brain every day. I do not miss having everything everywhere all at once in my pocket, it starts to weigh you down after a while. So I'm really content with it, even if I might have to trade it out to a different model at some point. It's only roughly $160 after all (actually I googled and it's listed as a lot cheaper -- I think my local tech store is screwing me off), which is an anxiety reliever on it's own compared to walking around with a $1000 iPhone.

Boox Mini

One of the newer things I've bought -- the Boox Mini is an e-ink tablet, meaning it uses technology to mimic the look and feel of regular paper (similar to a Kindle.) I use it to write on (you can write by hand and the tablet uses AI recognition to know what you wrote, so you can send it to a computer and upload here for example); read e-books, magazines, news and medium articles; listen to music, keep a calender, and use duolingo, basically. I originally got it to be able to use the bank identification app that is basically mandatory in Sweden, but spoiler, that didn't work lol. There might be a different app I could use but honestly by this point I am so used to not having a bankID that I haven't bothered. Either way I love my Boox and bring it with me everywhere. It has basically replaced my Kindle, though I sometimes still read books that I bought on my Kindle, on my Boox.

If you're unfamiliar with e-ink, it's a lot easier on the eye than blue light, if you're someone like me who struggles with that, and it also moves a little slower, which I think is a plus. The boox is still miles faster than say the Kindle web browser if you've ever been unfortunate enough to try to use that, and it scrolls smoothly, which suprised me. The notes you can take while reading are amazing as you can write directly on the book. Most apps work, though some are randomly blocked off, the two I've found being BankID and Substack, for some reason. If I only used it for writing I would get the bigger Boox, since I think taking notes on what is essentially an A5-paper is too small for me, but since I carry it around so much I'm glad I got the smaller version. It's a little bit bigger than a kindle.

Sony Z-1V

(Sorry for the bad image apparently taking a photo of the camera you're taking a photo with is rly hard)

Since I don't really have a functioning phone camera anymore, I decided to invest in a regular camera, and was pretty chocked to find that they cost $700 and pretty chocked to find myself just paying this and walking out of the store. But that being said I 100% don't regret it and have been loving the photos I've taken with it. I don't know nearly enough about cameras to do some sort of camera review here but it works, the photos are super sleek, and as with all low-tech (can you really call a $700 camera low-tech?) I find myself more appreciative of the photos I take with them, not drowning in screenshot and hasty photos but actually taking my time to take them, sorting through them, learning the craft of getting a good photo and appreciating them and what I want to savour a bit more.

End thoughts

At my heart I'm always a contrarian, a hipster if you will, so with all this mainstream tech-skepticism I've been seeing lately, I can't help but ask myself ... is social media good, actually?

Well, it's a hard sell for me. I try to return to instagram and I find it the most conformist space ever, like one ginormous panopticon. I've always felt that pressure around instagram, so it might just be me though. Twitter is fun, sometimes, and maybe it's fine to go on it once in a while just to have a laugh, and either the app has gone through a spiritual change recently or I've fallen into a better algorithm, but there's not as much pointless discource, and people seem to channel less of their own emotions into neurotic politics and are instead a bit more ... dadaistic, about using an app run by one of our more ego-wounded tech guys. I guess it's always the problem of wanting to be part of the group, feeling left behind when you're not in it; and suffocated and sad when you are. A lot of the internet still feels like trying to answer life's questions and finding nothing but a sea of wikihow articles. But then there's something oddly specifically relatable to everything you've ever cared about and joy and queer stuff and phenomena that you find you might just have cut yourself off from for no reason. At the end of the day it's not really about using technology less but about nurturing a better relationship with it. So I'm not currently planning on owning a smart phone again, but maybe I'll watch 1 (one) tiktok. At least I'm back to my true roots of internet-ing, which has always been blogging.∎

Read more: On Leaving Social Media (February 2024)