After hearing about the 15 year old girl who submitted the “Hijab Emoji”, the thought of creating and proposing an emoji crossed my mind. I do believe that emojis represent people and culture, and think that there is not enough representation about Arabs or Muslims. For the purposes of the Emoji project, I have decided to pick my hometown, Al Ain, to be the center for my proposed emojis.
While I was brainstorming about ideas, I thought about how to include Al Ain’s culture both in a youth’s perspective as well as the older generation’s one. I have created three emojis that represent the culture of Al Ain which are: 1) Falaj (or Falay in my dialect) 2) Mountain Dew and Sunflower Seeds 3) Dates. My first prototype of these emojis were a bit ugly but gets the point across. Here it is:
This was my first attempt at drawing them. After a few edits here and there, I finally managed to get a decent revised product:
Falaj
Mountain Dew and Sunflower Seeds
Dates
After working on these emojis, I had realized that there is a copyright issue with the mountain dew emoji, so I know this will definitely not do, nonetheless, it was great seeing the reactions of my friends who live in my hometown. I send these to my friend Ahmed, and he recognized all but one of the emojis which was the Falaj one, he thought it was a road or street. He says that they were authentic and that they represent another side of Al Ain other than its beautiful scenery. My other friends also think that they are cute and that they might need more work on it in terms of looking like a real emoji.
I am quite happy about this project (other than the fact that there is copyright). I hope that maybe someday at least, the dates emoji could be true!
As I sat down to create my own emojis I began to look for some guidelines. Having listened to the “Person in Lotus Position” podcast, I learned that emojis should be distinctive, not too big, not representing any brand, etc. I also looked at emojipedia in order to see what kind of emojis already exist so I would not end up repeating someone else’s idea. Then, I started to think about various symbols, objects, and activities that represent my hometown. I looked for inspiration in the old photos archive, creating a list of 15 potential emojis. Afterwards, I tried drawing my first emoji in Paint. It was too painful for me as someone who has zero graphic design skills, so I switched to regular paper and pencils.
My first selected emoji
is a soldier, which is a strong association I have with my hometown, because it
has the largest in Belarus air defense base as well as other military objects.
I was surprised not to find a lot of military-related content in emojipedia, so
I felt like this emoji would count as original. However, I wasn’t sure if I
should make it universal or not, and I ended up drawing a real Belarusian soldier
with an exact same cap and a red star in the center that they wear.
My second emoji is a birch tree – a very prominent symbol of my motherland, which has a lot of birch forests and folklore related to it.
For the third emoji, I tried drawing three different options. First was an orthodox church (because already existing emojis have only other kind of temples), second – a girl with a flower coronet (an expression of local culture), and the third, which I ended up selecting, was a hair braid (something that girls in Belarus wear a lot).
Firstly, I sent my
emojis to my mum and sister. I said the following: “I’m going to send you three
emojis that I created myself. They’re just drawings, but imagine that they’re
real emojis sent as a message. Tell me, what do you think? What thoughts or
feelings they evoke in you?”
My sister’s response: “The
first one is Sashka [our brother]…looks confused :D”; “Second one is Motherland”,
“Third one is femininity, traditions, Rus’ [the old name for lands currently occupied
by Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine]”
My mum’s response: “First
– surprise, Second – smile, hope. Third – romantic mood, a bit of sadness”.
As the military emoji made my sister associate it with my brother, who went to the army several years ago, I decided to send him these emojis too in order to hear his opinion. He did not reply 🙁
In order to make the 1st emoji more universal and remove any association with a particular person, I changed it. I drew a new face, filled with a khaki color, removing the cap with the red star.
I left the 2nd emoji, the birch, as it is. To the 3rd one, the braid, I added a flower and a red ribbon, which are again somewhat symbolic of Belarusian culture.
I sent the improved emojis to my two hometown best friends.
My friend Ilaria texted
the following: “The first one makes me feel disgusted. He is silly and dirty.
But at the same time I want to help him. He’s like a savage who has to be
taught how to live in our world”. “The second is very nice, meditative”. “The
third one reminds of the good old days. Maybe everything was not that good in
the past, but we always remember it as something nice”
My friend Anton replied in the following way: “The first one is sad because he looks like a military man. The second one is very pure and real. The third one is simple and with a soul…So cool to receive hand-made emojis!”. I asked him “do you see any connection between the three?”. He replied: “If I look at them all together I’d call them a series of emojis about Russia”.
So, overall my sister was the closest to understanding the communicated message, as she related the two emojis to the theme of Motherland. Also, my friend Ilaria, associating one of the emojis with the “good old days”, perceived the message in the right way, as when I was communicating an aspect of life in my hometown I was obviously thinking of the past because I no longer live there. My friend Anton, calling my emojis “a series of emojis about Russia”, was also close to understanding the cultural/locational reference.
In an attempt to represent aspects of life in Hong Kong, I began by brainstorming what I believed Hong Kong to be. If I were to show someone or introduce Hong Kong to someone, what would it be? While I had several different ideas in mind, the ones that stuck were these three: 1. Junk Boat, 2. Yum Cha, 3. Tai Chi Silhouette.
Junk Boat
For me, the backdrop of Hong Kong
perfectly contrasts the past and the future. There are so many instances in
Hong Kong, where you are able to find modernist architecture surrounded by a
historical backdrop, and that, in my opinion, is the beauty of Hong Kong. One
example is the historic trams that still to this day operate around the main
business hub of Hong Kong. Another example is the junk boat, which is an
ancient type of Chinese sailing ship that was developed during the Song
dynasty. So, when I was deciding which emoji to produce, I thought about Hong
Kong’s iconic skyline. However, located within the skyline is Hong Kong’s Junk
boat, sailing amongst the vast array of modern buildings. And, that represents
what Hong Kong is – a historical artifact amongst a fully modern society.
Yum Cha
Another great aspect of Hong Kong is the
food. In a way, “Yum Cha” doesn’t classify under the norms of breakfast, lunch
or dinner – it is a meal on its own, lying somewhere between morning and early
afternoon. The literal translation of “Yum Cha” means to drink tea, but what it
actually means is a meal that consists of several small dishes of dim sum
served with tea. And, having “Yum Cha” is a communal event, involving several
people to sit around a circular table, and share a platter of different kinds
of dim sum.
Tai Chi Silhouette
Hong Kong is the territory with the
world’s highest life expectancy in the world (at 84.0 years old in 2015), and
this is clearly evident by the number of elderly people in Hong Kong. I
remember how every morning (around 6am), as I got ready for school, several old
people down my home would be practicing Tai Chi in the park. Tai Chi is
well-known for its numerous health benefits, often curing medical problems that
come with age. Hence, I decided to use a well-known Tai Chi pose as my emoji.
Finally, the emoji is marked by a silhouette effect because it signifies the
timing of the practice – as the sun rises.
I
sent these three emoji to my family group chat and a friend from back home. In
both instances, I explained the assignment and what I was trying to create.
Both my family and my friend liked the idea of the three emoji, especially for
“Junk Boat”, and “Yum Cha”. My friend recommended changing the image of “Yum
Cha”, since he thought the teapot was too generic and didn’t really symbolize
“Yum Cha” completely. He suggested including other elements to the image like
dim-sum, etc. My family didn’t understand the silhouette effect without my
explanation. They suggested adding mountains in the background or the sun to
support the silhouette effect. By far, everyone liked the drawing and ideology
behind the “Junk Boat” emoji. Although my friend did mention he wouldn’t see
the emoji being used as much for the meaning I was trying to create.
I took in these advices, and began to make edits to my emoji. Since I wanted to keep the silhouette effect on the “Tai Chi” emoji, I decided to add in some mountains and sun into it. As for the “Yum Cha” emoji, I decided to change it to dim sum with a cup of tea on the side to get the full representation.
For this assignment I had to create three emojis that relate to my hometown. The very definition of hometown sparked some inner debate and left me perplexed for a while, but for the scope of the assignment, I decided to take the small town in which I spent most of my first 4 years growing up. Teteven is situated in the heart of the Balkan mountain range in central Bulgaria, the houses are seated in a small cutout of the forest and surrounded in every direction by tall mountain peaks. The local population has names for every peak and every stretch of land between the town and the top of the peaks belongs to the original towners. Now, there are around 10,000 people living in the town, although its population peaked 30,000 in 1990s when the town was a local industrial center. Now tourism is the only commercial activity in this quit town.
When I was first confronted with this task I was lost and had no idea where to start. Part of the problem was that that some tasks/activities that came to my mind immediately when thinking about my hometown were already captured by built-in emojis in my phone, and I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I wanted to create something that couldn’t be explained with one of the existing emojis, although it could be communicated by a combination of them. Hence, I began to brainstorm activities that I used to do with my friends when I was in there in the summer, the sort of things that everyone in the town would be doing on a regular basis. The first thing that came to my mind was a picture of the mountain peak right across our house, where there is a lush forest and hiking track. I used to go hiking and playing there with my friends, so it was a location that we were often talking about in our childhood. Hence, I imagined myself as a child now, and thought to myself “how can I send this location/hiking route/ to my friends with one emoji only. Then I began to draft the image of the mountain peak and the river underneath it.
This is the first draft of my emoji:
Then I sent it to one of my friends Radi, without any prior explanation of what he was looking at. His first reaction was: “This is a nice drawing. Did you make it? What am I looking at?” Then I said it is something from our hometown, and he replied: “Is it [that] peak???”
I explained what I was trying to depict, and he agreed that it looks similar, but the brought up one point which evaded my attention – the peak was not grey. There were some rocks on top of the peak, but it does not show as grey, as it is usually covered by low shrubs. So the second iteration of my emoji removes the grey peak and makes it green to match the rest of the forest beneath it.
The second emoji represents one of my favorite activities that I would do every summer, and every time the weather allows it – swinging in a hammock between the trees, only the sky and the sun above. Since there was no official emoji to show this activity, I thought it would be nice whenever one of my friends texts me “wyd?” to be able to reply just with one emoji that captures the scenery.
For the first iteration of the emoji I wanted to keep it simple and make it as stripped-down as possible. Hence, I drew two simple trees and a hammock between them.
This time my friend Radi already had context about what I am doing, so his reaction immediately connected the hammock with what I used to do all summer. He also said it looked like a “creepy smiley face”. LOL. His suggestions for improvement were to include the sky and sun to make the emoji more wholesome and easier to situate the activity in its environment – outdoors in the open air, and so that it doesn’t look like a creepy smiley face.
The third emoji captures an activity that relates more universally to the people in the town, not so much to my own experiences. Needless to say, a community in the heart of the Balkans in a drinker’s community, in fact there are legends that men from this region of the Balkan can drink all night and not get affected by the alcohol. Hence, even young people in the town drink casually. I wanted my emoji to capture the social aspect of drinking together and having a good time, hence I decided to depict the moment of clinging the bottles together to say “Cheers!”. For us, Balkan people, this is part of tradition and permeates the social and family environment, especially in mountain areas where the climate is harsher and people use drinking as a recreational activity to escape the rough conditions outside.
Radi’s initial reaction was laughter. He found the emoji on point with the social and cultural conditioning of young people in this town, and he agreed it might simplify their texting life. His feedback was to try to represent the clinging of the bottles better, to highlight the social aspect of drinking and the good times of it.
In the aftermath of this exercise, I realized how hard it is to capture a universal experience and represent an activity in such a way that everyone understands its meaning and rich sociocultural implications. Also, graphically, I wish I was able to create more simplistic and minimalistic emojis, so that the reader’s attention is grabbed immediately and the they convey meaning instantly, without the need to inspect the details.
I live in an agricultural city where majority of
families possess vineyards and produce homemade vine. I draw 3 emojis; a red
tractor, a typical look of a vineyard worker, and a bowl full of grapes and other
fruits.
These 3 emojis most clearly represent the city in the
clearest visual form. I first sent them to my sister and a friend, explaining
them the purpose of the homework assignment. Their responses were as followed:
I was shocked by my sister’s response; she interpreted
only one of the emojis – the stereotypical look of a worker – saying this does
not look to her as a worker, but rather the look one makes when they are forced
to reply “YES” even though they want to say “NO” in specific situations. I
closely looked at the face afterwards and realized it can be interpreted that
way too. This is related to our class discussion from last week on how people
can have different intentions for sending a particular emoji and how the receivers
are capable of interpreting it in a completely different way.
However, I got an interesting response from one of my friends, Iva, who decided to respond using a mix of text and emojis. Iva understood the original idea of what my 3 emojis represent. In fact, she described the meaning of my emojis, as opposed to how my sister reacted to them. These two responses are one small proof for us to understand that emoji language can have multiple meanings and be interpreted differently depending on the situation.
After I had gotten two reactions on the original version, I decided to send the emojis to my parents with a different emoji for the stereotypical look of a worker – I made it funnier this time:
Here are my parents’ responses:
I only asked them if they can associate the emojis with
anything, not explaining the purpose of the exercise and the connection of the
emojis to home. Both my parents are not a very tech-oriented people and they do
not use emojis frequently. My mom immediately got the point of the sequence, saying
“I can associate this with home; the tractor, the grapes – as if this is a
representation of our city. It is represented in an interesting way.” My dad
first asked what the picture was about (the emojis), and then I told him it is
a visual representation of something we think or the way in which we express
emotions. Then he replied “aaaaa” – as if he got it, saying “this represents
our city of Kavadrci – that is a typical worker with a cigarette and a hat, the
grapes and the tractor.” I was quite surprised to see how people who have not
grown up in the decades of technology expansion and dependence can easier
understand emoji language. It reminded me of the time I was a kid in primary
school and used creativity to visually represent my ideas (similar to what Iva
said in her response); comparing my experience to the one of today’s
generations, I can argue that they lack creativity for expressing ideas in a
visual form because they are restricted to using emojis available to them –
this is mainly due to the fact that kids nowadays depend on using technology
both in and out of school.
Before I started my assignment I drafted what I wanted to create mentally, I had a lot of random emoji’s I could’ve made but I kept them at the back of my head. As I listened to the podcast the importance of emojis dawned on me, hearing the experience of the young girl that petitioned for a hijab emoji really made me realize that there’s kind of something bigger behind emoji and their representation. Personally I couldn’t care less for emoji’s as I practically never use them unless I was using them ironically or if the emoji was considered a meme.
Going off of that, having to choose what emoji’s could represent me or my culture I was a little conflicted because although I’m Emirati I still consider the internet to be a big part of who I am. So I chose to dedicate one of my 3 emoji’s to the internet. I basically made an Arabic version of the ?️ emoji as the emoji is considered to be a meme. As for my other two emoji’s I chose to go for a Lugaimat emoji and a Red Chai emoji.
Part of being an Arab and an Emirati is the excess consumption of red chai, paired with the Lugaimat emoji it represents the hospitality of Arabs. Initially I checked to see if there was an emoji for tea, and there was tea/coffee in a mug and also Japanese matcha. Referring back to the 99% Invisible podcast and the importance of representation especially in something as simple as emoji’s, I realized that there’s a lack of representation for things that are “Arab”, a simple example being tea. One could argue that the tea mug emoji represents tea already but that would ignore the cultures where tea is only consumed in small glasses. That glass in itself is a form of representation that could be overlooked, much like the farmer with the pitchfork emoji.
Moving forward :
What irked me about this assignment was knowing that the format of our “emoji’s” automatically makes them not emoji’s, as they are images/pictures that are a file and not part of a text. So if I were to send a message without the context of “this is what a chai emoji would look like” , then it looks like I just sent an illustration. With that being said, I ended up having to give context to most of my recipients which to me did not flow naturally.
As for the reactions that I got they were pretty much what I expected, mainly because they’re just emoji and no one really “reacts” to emoji’s. Below are screenshots of some of the conversations I had, My favorite emoji was the Arabic “B” because it looked the most like an emoji in terms of design and it made a couple of my friends laugh. As for the Lugaimat emoji, it pretty much looks like a round candied apple and without the context of the assignment people probably would not have been able to figure it out. One of my goals when I made these emoji’s was to maintain the emoji aesthetic so it feels more like one. I think that the Chai emoji looked the most like an emoji in terms of design and could probably pass as one if it was used in a text and not as an image. One of the reactions I got for the Chai emoji ties back to the 99% podcast and representation, seeing someone who has not been to family gatherings remember how much they miss drinking tea with their family just shows how something as simple as tea is deeper than what we take at face value, much like emoji.
I decided to share my meme with people that aren’t aware it’s a meme
“I’m really craving Lugaimat now, I’ll ask my brother to get me some”
(Note: I made 4 emojis because the marijuana leaf was one I disputed including, despite its prevalence as a common icon for Colorado. This has lead me to a more in-depth conversation on how cultures and regions can at times be identified by taboo images in other regions. Where the leaf might offend some, it is abundantly used in Colorado merchandising and advertisements. The usage of the leaf calls into question the dispute of universalizing images that have legal conflict in other regions, or reference activities that are not appropriate for all audiences.)
The Colorado flag – The Colorado flag is adorned proudly and purchased by both visiting tourists and native Coloradans. I simplified it down to the yellow circle and red C because the center of the flag is the least amount of the flag needed for it to be identified as the Colorado flag. The red C and yellow dot further break out of the flag medium and now act as one of the most central icons for Colorado.
The Marijuana Leaf – As Colorado was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana usage, the state is now abundant with dispensaries and marijuana-embellished merchandising. The legalization has led to a high increase in tourism as well as marijuana taxation becoming a significant industry in Colorado’s state economy.
The DIA Blue Mustang – Most visitors flying into the Denver International Airport comment on the blue mustang statue because it has these bright red glowing eyes that pierce through the night. Though many tourists have distaste for its unsettling stature, there is a lot of hometown pride for having this horse outside of the airport because of its polarizing effect on people entering Colorado.
Red Rocks Concert Venue – As one of the most famous natural outdoor venues in both Colorado and the nation, it is expected that every native Coloradan make annual visits to Red Rocks to see concerts or attend festivals and workout events. The giant red rock in my emoji is the iconic structure that surrounds the venue.
Initial Reactions:
For one of my longtime best friends back in Colorado, I casually messaged “Man I miss Colorado”, and then inserted the emojis. The immediate response was: “are these emojis you made?”. I followed up the response by asking what would be changed/added to the Colorado emojis. She suggested:
I next messaged my sister, this time just sending the emojis and fully disclosing the project. She suggested I make an emoji for the flatiron rocks in Boulder, and add the seating rows to the Red Rocks emoji.
(both messages were sent over Facebook messenger)
The Red Rocks Amphitheater and the Flatirons Boulder Rocks:
From this feedback, I made round 2:
Second Followup: My sister commented that the leaf was a little too simplified, but the changes for the Red Rocks landscape and flatirons formation were appropriate and easily recognizable. My friend further commented that the green “wasn’t quite right” for the flatirons landscape; she mentioned that the colors for the landscapes were too literal, and would need to be more saturated or exaggerated like the sunset emojis in the current keyboard. The red rock needed to return to being an actual red rock, and the flatirons needed to be a brighter yellow color, with the sky more faded to allow the structures to take over. Despite this, both my friend and sister responded very positively to the final emojis, and as concepts they seemed to properly embody Colorado.
In my personal reflections, I find that the blue horse is likely the least recognizable Colorado icon for people outside of the state, as it is much more of an inside joke amongst locals. By contrast, the two landscape emojis I created could be repurposed into either a mountain landscape or an outdoor concert venue (much like the lotus position representing peace and calmness in addition to its more literal definition of meditation and yoga).
The leaf on its own is definitely far too controversial to be included into a universal keyboard, though this also calls into question the emoji representations for alcohol, the middle finger, the syringe, the pill, the bomb and other more controversial emojis. I find it interesting how, on the delicate scale for universality, marijuana is an example of a very well known substance that, due to its illegality in most parts of the world, cannot be implemented in a keyboard. Unicode also has to keep in mind that the earliest age for people to have phones and send emojis is younger than ever; all emojis, by this standard, must be appropriate for all audiences, including the elementary school students with iPads in school.
If Colorado were to have its own strict set of emojis, I imagine that the cigarette would be removed, as cigarettes are far more controversial and frowned upon than marijuana consumption. My sister mentioned that she could see herself using the landscape emojis as a way of encouraging a trip to visit one of the locations, as a way of heading into downtown Boulder or going to a concert. The horse, though iconic for people in Colorado, currently does not hold much functionality in conversation unless the conversation was perhaps specific to the DIA. The Colorado flag is likely the one icon that could take up its own definition beyond what it is; in reference to Colorado lingo, or any Colorado inside jokes, the icon would pose very well in messaging to substitute the word Colorado.
Method: I used Illustrator for the entire process. For the landscape emojis, I googled Colorado Red Rocks and Colorado Flatirons, seeking out the clearest image that could still be identifiable even as a small square. I adjusted the saturation and contrast of the colors in the images, then inserted them into Illustrator and image traced. I further took the frame from the current landscape emojis to create a final product.
For the Colorado flag and marijuana leaf, I googled both and ended up with already simplified pngs. I tried choosing a green that wasn’t so neon and glib, more so trying to find a subtle, natural green (one that could blend in with the rest of the emojis on the keyboard).
The Blue Mustang was also created by finding a perfect portrait of the horse in an image, image tracing it in Illustrator, and editing the colors to make the horse a brighter blue. I then added the red eye as the final iconic detail for its recognition (though admittedly this detail is not visible in such a small platform).
In terms of sending the icons, I chose Facebook messenger, as it is the platform where I send the most emojis. I screenshot the Facebook emojis to get a sense of their sizing (about 66 by 68 pixels in size), then modified mine down to the same size so that when they sent, they appeared as small icons.
The
digital detox has been a very enriching experience overall. It was a perfect
excuse for me to get offline and focus on real-world interactions and give
myself time to think more. This is ironic because we’ve said that we use
computers as a tool to think. But when we’re too engrossed and consume too much
of it, we become lost and unable to think clearly about what matters in life.
I’ve
found that most of my phone usage has been focused on checking social media,
refreshing my feed and watching countless videos throughout the day. This
wasn’t for me to think about anything, but purely to entertain myself. The
amount of new entertaining information had become addictive over time and I
found myself checking my phone every time I had the chance.
During my digital detox, I was able to fully concentrate on
my readings and assignments without distraction. I was able to talk with
friends without checking my phone constantly and even have some deep
conversations. But this was by no means easy – I was so tempted to just switch
my phone back on and get back to my oh-so-convenient life. I was surprised that
I even had to do some preparation for this before I started. For instance, I
had to tell my friends and family that I won’t be able to contact them online,
I had to print out everything that I would have otherwise read on my computer,
and even had to take out my IDs from the back of my phone so I don’t carry the
device around. The most fundamental parts of my ability to function daily
seemed so dependent on my devices – I actually don’t have a watch so I had no
idea what the time was unless I asked someone else.
This made me reflect a lot on myself and my uncontrollable
usage of my devices. I’ve let my phone and computer become the brains of myself,
giving it my daily notes and reminders, my contact information, everything. As
E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” puts it, technological devices seem to “feed
us and clothes us and houses us, through it we speak to one another, through I t
we see one another, in it we have our being.” After the detox, I’ve become much
aware of my relationship with my phone and will consciously reduce its influence
over how I live everyday. To do this, as I’ve written in my journals, I’ll look
for offline alternatives and keep my mind focused on real-world interactions.
Embarking on this digital detox experiment was quite peculiar. I completed it on a working day instead of an off day and I ensured to take as many precautions as I could the night before starting out. I printed out all the long readings I could squeeze in, copied down my Google calendar events, read out all last minute emails and finished out any pending piece of urgent work I could have finished the next day but couldn’t afford to now. And so I ended up going to bed late, set to wake up around 6.45am and start the 8-hour against-the-clock countdown.
The absence of technology surely did affect my experience, in fact it occurred just 20 minutes in. Morning cycling class without my earphones and Youtube playlist felt very different. Instead of songs, I listened to my breath and the monotonic sound of the bike wheels rotating, trying to rack up the miles. With no distraction, the ride becomes much more focused but pedaling also becomes very conscious. I achieved my longest ride yet so far. The morning shower where I usually have my radio blast in the bathroom felt very quiet, a silence only broken by the water falling on top of my head. And when my brain isn’t working at listening to the news or my football podcast while showering, the non solicitation of my hearing senses had me having all types of thoughts going through my head. Like Turkle mentioned in Reclaiming Conversation, taking time alone with our own thoughts becomes pretty limited without us realizing it with all the technology at our disposition; the gadgets are always readily available to take us on a virtual experience, which is near irresistible, by design. But then again, computers offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and the illusion of friendship without the demand of intimacy (Turkle, 7).
This non-irresistibility aspect is proven further when the author states that recent research showed that people were uncomfortable if left alone with their thoughts, even for a few minutes (Turkle, 10). Practical examples of this situation are daily occurrences, especially in instances where a person is sat and has to perform something non-intellectual, as is the case with eating. My dining hall observations of people sitting by themselves during meals made it crystal clear that a good majority end up on their phones, and some never leave their eyes off it, even when bringing the food up to their mouths. I myself ate alone at breakfast and had a late lunch long conversation with friends, both instances which I exhaustively detail in my diary entries. Using my phone in such instances is something I impose upon myself to limit and so, it was not too hard not to pull my phone, even to check the time. I got to appreciate my wristwatch. My theory about sitting alone and pulling up a phone is to give the impression, not all the times but often, that one is busy doing something else besides eating and not wasting time that could be used to multitask, even if that meant scrolling down Facebook infinitely. Alternatively, it is to not meet other people’s looks because well, sitting alone can be interpreted very differently by various people, usually not so positively.
Finally, I wanted to zero in on an interesting comment Turkle makes that has much relevance to the academic environment we are in. She says that “these days, faculty are less deferential about the use of devices during class by clearly stating classroom guidelines at the beginning of the semester that include a no-laptop and phone policy”. In one of the classes I had during the detox experiment, my professor did exactly just that at the beginning and has seemed very strict about it. This is key, because just like putting a limitation on when we can use our devices can be so useful in getting everybody involved and fostering in-class conversations, we each need to self-discipline ourselves to make the right use of our communication devices and still engage in meaningful human conversations and communications at large to grow emotionally and empathetically as human beings.
Detox exercise was a relatively easy and enjoyable thing to do, which is why I extended it from 8 to 12 hours. As I turned off all my electronic devices, I immediately felt happier. I started paying attention to my inner state and the surroundings, grasping the beauty of the morning sun, feeling the gentle wind on my skin, observing other people around me. On the contrary to Turkle’s claim that multitasking makes everyone feel good immediately as it gives the brain a new input, I felt good because I freed myself from multitasking. I could focus on one thing at time, such as my meal at breakfast in the dining hall, conversation with a friend, or the dirty floor of my room. No one could deprive me from the experiences of the real life, everything I could sense now and here, and everyone I could communicate with face to face.
The joy of being able to feel life more deeply on the rare of occasion of a technology detox proved to me that technology does deprive us of our senses. This relates to the words of Kuno in “The Machine Stops” when he talks about the Machine which “robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch…” hence making humans lose a part of themselves. Even though I might have experienced a few moments of discomfort while being completely alone, I soon started rejoicing the solitude as it activated my awareness of the beautiful environment around me. I never felt bored, which is one of the main problems that Turkle highlighted. On the opposite, I felt more excited and entertained than usual, simply because I was more conscious of all the different components of my life.
However, the second part of the detox went not as smooth as the first one. I went to Dubai with friends in the afternoon, and this was when I realized that I’m seriously addicted to reporting whatever is going on in my life. The more fun things we did and saw, the more anxious I became. Why? Because I had no phone to upload an insta-story or send a picture to my friends and family on whatsapp. I felt so desperate about not being able to capture the moments of the trip, and I was jealous seeing my friends doing that all the time. Only after they promised to send me all the pictures and videos that they were making, I calmed down a little bit. When I returned to my room, I rushed to my phone and started sending and uploading these pictures and videos, relieving my anxiety at the same time.
So, even though thankfully I have not experienced loneliness, boredom, or desire to put my attention in my phone, I did feel anxiety about not being able to share my experiences with my whatsapp contacts and Instagram followers. In other words, while being in a group of my friends in Dubai, I couldn’t stop thinking how much I wanted others to hear and see how awesome my day was. This proved that although I can easly go without receiving information, I am somewhat addicted to communicating information to others.
