As is often the case, I was still up at about 10:45 p.m., playing a last round of a little downloaded puzzle. Too tired to read, but not quite ready to bunk in.
I looked at my phone for a moment, and I noticed an odd notification. It read: “Your bedtime is 11 p.m. Please get ready for bed now.”
Wow, I thought. The last time I heard that sort of message…? Well, I don’t want to date myself. Let’s just say it wasn’t yesterday.
Get ready for bed now? What am I, an eight year old?
I ignored the notification. Then, at precisely 11 p.m., my phone screen turned grey. I could still look at all the applications, but the images and text had turned…grey. Like me when I don’t feel so good. The colour had drained away.
“I guess I’d better turn in”, I thought. So I did.
Then I laid there for a few minutes, thinking. How is it that a device is now telling me when to go to bed? Aren’t I the one who is in charge? Heavens, I pay its bills. I keep it warm. I plug it in when the little battery sign shows ‘empty’. I keep it from smashing on the ground into little glass splinters. Simply put, Phone wouldn’t exist without my intervention.
But it seems determined to intervene in mine. Really?
After all, you know, I do all the right things for my health. (Or I think I do.) Diet, vitamins, walking, meditation sometimes. I brush my teeth. Do I really need my phone telling me what to do?
But then I moved into denial. This notification is directed at errant teenagers that need to go to bed. Not me! I am in control of my destiny!
I looked down. I examined the phone a bit more carefully. It mentioned another odd thing, though, something about “digital health”.
Digital health?
Isn’t it strange, though, that if we have enabled a particular kind of notification, our phone will guide us to healthy lifestyle choices. Shucks, I didn’t know I’d enabled it. But there it was.
Then, again I was confused by the terminology. Were we talking about my health? Or about whether digital things were, themselves, healthy? I didn’t think digital devices were healthy. Aren’t they, sort of, value neutral? Or maybe it was the health of my digits? My fingers and my toes? (Wait: are toes “digits”?)
I’d say this is the beginning of robot overlords. It’s not my fault, though! I haven’t enabled them. So far I’ve resisted their siren calls. No ‘smart’ fridges for me, or ‘smart’ thermostats. I’ve banned Alexa from the house. I’d tried to keep my home as ‘analog’ as possible. Yet. Here it was, a tiny little glossy thing (albeit covered with greasy fingerprints) telling me to go to bed. “Go to bed!” The most parental of commands, directed at me.
What’s next, Phone? Will you be telling me to wash my socks next? (Oh! I’d better not say that out loud. I’ll be seeing ads for washing machines on my feed probably, say tomorrow?) After all, my socks have holes in them. Next up: sewing notifications!
