Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
I&#x27;ve been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this.<p>I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there&#x27;s a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful.<p>I can compare this to the couple of times I&#x27;ve tried to &quot;quit the Internet&quot; (i.e. social media, reddit, etc.). The problem is that there&#x27;s nowhere to run from the Internet. I can avoid tobacco stores, I can&#x27;t avoid my iPhone. For what it&#x27;s worth, I&#x27;d love to smash my phone and throw it in a ditch, but there are certain social and professional obligations that require me to hold onto it. I have to be able to check my work email on the go. I have to use Facebook to stay in the loop about social events because all my friends use Facebook to schedule those social events. I have to call my parents once in a while. One device is a tool for all of those, in addition to being an ultra-high-tech meme-box with which I can mainline information to make myself feel good. It is of course not all bad, but the wonderful connectivity of the Internet is inextricably wrapped up with the &quot;DoS Attack on Your Free Will&quot;.<p>To get back to the analogy, I&#x27;d like to think I was successful at quitting tobacco because I can avoid it. If I were giving someone tips to quit something, that&#x27;s the best advice I could think to offer: avoid it. If you want to quit smoking, wouldn&#x27;t it be preposterous to buy a pack of cigarettes and carry it everywhere? The temptation would always be there.<p>So it is with smartphones. When the best minds in attention capitalism are trying to pull me in every time I send a text message, how can I quit that? It&#x27;s always in my pocket, and I can&#x27;t simply throw it away because there are now certain expectations that I carry that tool with me almost everywhere I go. There is nowhere to run from this modern media, and that terrifies me.