I find several parallels between my detox experience, overall observations of my tech-usage habits and the readings. In this reflection I will mention two. First, I often make the excuse to keep a hold of my phone for emergency cases (that never occur) and, second, I have gotten used to the flaws of tech that I only realize when I isolate myself from tech.

I frequently tell myself that I must keep my phone of me in case there is an important conversation that cannot be postponed. I understand that a side effect to this is that I will also use the phone for procrastination, but the idea that I would make someone wait on my response or not be able to reach out myself when I need to, alarms me. For this reason, my phone was next to me during the detox as well. However, I believe I have assigned very incorrect weights to how many non-reschedulable conversations I have versus how much time I spend procrastinating. That is, I barely ever have communications over phone that are of a must-respond-now type. This thought resonated with me when reading the paragraph about the father who always took his phone with him when going for the newspaper together with his child from “Reclaiming Conversation”. “The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought” (26. I realize that by worrying about potentially missing out on something I opt-in to miss out on daily communications every day.

Second resolution I have stems from how Vashti from “The Machine Stops” “did not notice the noise” (6) of the machine anymore as she had lived with it for so long. Similarly, I believe I do not notice the bad effects tech has on me, at least until I have stepped away from tech for a while. The detox might have been too short for me, but from my previous experiences (hiking for a week with no constant access to phone), the feeling is truly liberating. However, when I get back to tech, I tend to again forget about the benefits I experienced with no tech.