News. The more connected we get, the more people will hit the brake, embrace analogue, dumb phones (which we might have to re-name ‘smartphones’ one day) and unconnectedness.
The former YouTube director Anna Bateson told Mediatel that we have forgotten that the consumer is a person and therefore we have expericenced a loss of humanity, which ultimately means:
“People are beginning to tune out and protect themselves. You have ad blocking; blindness to ad formats; you have a reluctance to give your data away or to allow your data to be used, which brings complexities with targeting; and you have, at the most extreme, people who are deciding to opt out of connectivity,” said Anna Bateson.
She stressed that some techies in Silicon Valley have chosen to disconnect themselves and ensured that their kids grow up in an environment with no devices or very little exposure to tech. They don’t want their kids to grow up like they did themselves.
Tech-Averse Becomes Cool
Whereas tech-averse individuals were deemed old-fashioned or Luddites just a decade ago, we see a trend where this category of humans are admired. Like this writer, who listens to his tech-averse father’s advice not to bring your smartphone on a holiday:
“Vacations, Dad reminded me, are a time to disconnect, recharge and reboot. And if we’d really needed to reach him, we could have called his hotel.”
or why texting is overrated:
“Dad texts, just like everyone else. He texts that he’s on the way. He texts when he’s going to be late. But I once asked him for pressing real-estate advice in a text message, figuring he’d write back when he had a moment. He didn’t respond. I texted again. Still no response. Before long, I got worried.
“You OK?” I texted.
“Call me,” he replied.
Concerned, I called him right away. Without preamble, he launched into an exhaustive answer to my real-estate query.
I let him finish and asked, “So, you’re OK, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “But if you have a real question, pick up the phone. That call took us three minutes. Now we can get on with our lives. Gotta go, love you!”
