I’m getting better at keeping tabs on my body, though I’m far away from any level of proficiency. Nobody who knows me would describe me as a pre-eminent athlete, and for someone who loves organizing, I have a remarkably difficult time keeping a daily vitamin routine. Talking about it in depth only makes me look inadequate. But I’m waving the white flag today, because something is wrong with my pinky.
My pinky is dented. Here is a picture of it.
I’ve half-noticed it for a while, thinking it was a trick of the light or a recent indent from my phone. But when I really started looking at it a few days ago, I realized it’s permanently dented all the time. The more I looked at my pinky, the more unsettled I became over the fact that this happened without me noticing. Why is my pink so malleable, and how did I never realize this?
It turns out that I am not special at all. It’s a very common experience — so much so that it’s aptly titled “smartphone pinky.” Holding a smartphone one-handed can cause it to rest on the pinky, and after enough use and pressure from the phone, the skin and the subcutaneous fat beneath it on the pinky can become indented. Doctors are quick to assure us that it doesn’t stop any blood flow, and likely is reversible.
As someone who historically does not check in on how my body’s doing, this slow slide toward smartphone pinky feels plausible. I only got a massage for the first time last month. I never had anything against massages, I just didn’t know where to begin — Swedish? Thai? 50 or 80 minutes? Why is it all so expensive, and if it’s cheap, what’s going to happen to me?
What got me over the line was a gift certificate for a 90-minute Thai massage nearby (thank you Sam!). My masseuse was sweet, capable, and found out quickly that I had knots in every area of my body. At one point, she shot me an apologetic smile as she went to town on my forearm and said, “Sorry, I know this is hurting you.” It was hurting me, but the pain was expected. I’m at fault for being 26 and never getting a massage before this point, but my dreaded little smartphone pinky can be traced back solely to my phone. Which is also my fault, but I don’t want to admit that.
It goes without saying that technology (in the realm of phones, computers, AI and VR) affects us, but something about it manifesting in this small way is getting to me. It’s bugging me even more than the side effects that are talked about over and over — that technology ruins our posture, makes our eyesight worse, affects pathways in the brain, and leads to a more sedentary lifestyle. We even feel vibrations that aren’t there. I can deal with that. But now you come and mangle my pinky?
Maybe I don’t have a leg to stand on; any action we do, or technology we use, can lead to pain. Texting thumb, or pain in the tendons of your thumbs, was originally discovered by the Swiss surgeon Fritz de Quervain in 1895. De Quervain syndrome (as it’s formally known) has had a variety of names — washerwoman's sprain, mother’s thumb, gamer’s thumb. It can come from repetitive actions around the house, playing piano or golfing. When looking at De Quervain syndrome in a larger scope, it’s easy to see that assigning blame to phones is misplaced — it’s just one way an ongoing issue can arise. Pain comes from interaction with the outside world across forms.
Surely, this can’t be all there is. There has to be a world where people don’t fall under side effects from interacting with what we’ve created (the horror) — and I’ve found it. I present to you a world where there is no pain, and nobody is affected by technology: Dimension Apple.
Max Read, a previous editor-in-chief at Gawker, wrote this detailed and fantastic piece on what Apple chooses to write in their texts when they come out with marketing campaigns, which he nicknames Dimension Apple. I won’t summarize too much because it’s a great piece and you should read it, but in it, Max points out that many texts feature “people” living full lives without negativity — constantly sharing photos, being a part of stuffed pasta clubs, planning parties, never gossiping. And by proxy of that, being active. They go on road trips, hikes, and say they will meet each other “bright and early.”
It’s a careful balance for advertising to thread nowadays, the fine line between authenticity and aspirational perfection. Apple leaning towards the latter tracks. The ideal Apple user uses technology, but isn’t used by technology. They don’t acknowledge their phone or computer ever, negatively or positively. Technology is a purely invisible addition to their life, having no impact on them. But in my Dimension Cam, it would go a little something like this:
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Technology helps us overcome pain — this Intelligencer article explores how the Apple Vision Pro can greatly improve disabled users’ lives. Some people like being affected by technology. Others want to go beyond just the unintentional effects of technology into something more akin to synthesis. Ray Kurzweil — the guy who predicted back in 2005 that singularity will occur by 2045 — has doubled down on his claims since then and wrote a sequel to his controversial book that comes out today. In this recent interview, Ray highlights what he hopes AI will do to the human body. He talks about death in a way that kinda feels like he’s unwilling to accept it due to his own baggage (which, to each their own). Regardless of his hang-ups, the interview highlights how to some people, the impact of technology on our bodies is the entire point. It’s the ideal outcome.
We need technology to make us better. But technology also makes us worse. They are two sides of the same coin, with no way to separate it for everyone — if anything, the best outcome under capitalism is that one group of people will have only negative experiences at the expense of others having only positive ones. That feels almost worse, in a way.
Humans will always need technology, and our bodies will always be affected by it. I am no master of technology or my body, but that is irrelevant. In the triangulation between myself, my body and technology, I’m the least important element. The other two are non-negotiable parts of the experience; my viewpoint is the most malleable. Pain is expected, and so is my ability to accept that.
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
This Cut piece divides people into Forgettors and Rememberers, and weighs out the cost of memory in a very surface-level-but-not way. I went into it thinking it would be a light piece that brought up the pros and cons of each side, but it’s weirdly transparently biased and melodramatic. “The fear in general for the Forgetter is that their side isn’t being represented — that they’re not able to authoritatively tell the story of their own lives or relationships.” Or, you could simply write anything you want down?
If you are sensitive to things out in the world, you’re out of luck — companies often drop the ball when it comes to accurately labeling allergens, and the LA Times released this report a few weeks ago on how there are pesticides in an overwhelming amount of weed products.
We are not the kindest to the environment either, as this dive on the environmental impact of AI shows that AI usage takes a lot of resources (not great), even when people use it as a joke (even worse) and it’s not being thoroughly monitored (really awful).