A Catholic Search for Digital Simplicity and Integrity
The recent fervour and uproar about the implications of a growing digital oligarchy fill me with an odd delight. I take no pleasure in the proliferation of such powers, but am pleased to see so many making deliberate choices around digital culture, wellbeing and the encroaching presence of the mediums we employ, or rather, employ us.
For some years now I’ve been on a journey to attempt to simplify my technological habits, in order to better align them with the spiritual intent of a contemplative vocation. I don’t have an inherent antipathy to technology, but am acutely aware of the its capacity to damage my prayer life, among other important things, such as my ability and capacity to read, and simply pursue God’s will in any given moment.
I thought I’d cover some of the approaches, mistakes and methods I’ve undertaken to help others in their pursuit of digital simplicity and integrity. The lessons cannot apply to all, but I’m sure that some will find use in what I’ve learnt, and what I’ve adopted to live with greater clarity and integrity.
Focus
One of the first steps that I took was when my three year old son threw my Kindle into the bathtub. Whilst I immediately reacted with a sense of loss, I had to admit a certain relief once I saw it sink into the water. In truth, I’d read on it - a lot; but deep down I knew that whenever I used it, I was only partly committed to whatever it was I was reading. I couldn’t turn off the nagging possibility of reading something else. There was a question forever haunting me: Wouldn’t you rather be reading something else on this thing?
And of course, I’d filled the device with all manner of great books, which in and of itself should be a good thing. Only somehow, my fallen nature being what it is, it became a bad thing. I took the opportunity to turn back to paper books and haven’t looked back since. Quitting Facebook, Instagram and active Twitter use some years ago provided a similar fine tuning of attention and intent. Once I’d made the break, I became more conscious of the ugly aspect of myself that was forever scripting and discerning two things: What clever thing could I post next? How is this going to be received by my loved ones and the broader community?
Caveat
It had been a nagging disturbance lurking at the back of my skull for as long as I could remember having committed to these mediums, but one I’d accepted for the thrill of the dopamine hit. That said, I’d cut back on certain mediums, granting tremendous potential for improvement in the focus, silence and stillness that I could cultivate - however, it’s never been a given outcome. It’s always been easy enough to fill that space with another noise, be it podcasts, checking email or online reading and the like - which are of course all fine in moderation. I’ve slowly learnt to replace the behaviour with the good reading, prayer, or silence that I’ve been seeking, otherwise the world will rush in to crowd the space you’ve just rendered available for it.
Simplicity
A significant part of this whole process for me has been taming phone use. For most of us, it’s clearly the biggest digital distraction we have: The slick, perfectly engineered package of plastic and glass that fits right in our pocket, eager to draw us from any given moment with an ever evolving suite of features, apps and notifications. Here again, a drowned iPhone provided the opportunity to break from the repetitive cycle of habitual use and upgrade. I replaced it with a $30 dumb phone that was supposed to be a temporary solution, but became, for me, a novel experiment in apparent simplicity.
The lack of apps, dynamic functionality and any aesthetic appeal worked a treat, and I never reached for the thing unless it was for a call, or a text, incoming or outgoing. But the truth of it was, the limitations that were supposed to free me up became awful encumbrances. It’d take me five minutes to send a simple text, and I’d end up spending half an hour a week managing my inbox because the internal memory had been expended, again. There was no way to easily import contacts, so there was a slow migration process, and any time my wife would send me a photo or screenshot of something she desperately needed me to find or follow, frustration or calamity would usually ensue.
I sought, therefore, a middle ground. Some kind of sweet spot where the simplicity of the feature phone had reached it’s peak before we switched over to the glamour of smartphones. There are wonderful, purposely built, modern phones designed for this very reason. Offerings from Punkt and the LightPhone are two that I coveted for some time, before accepting that they really were both cost prohibitive for a man of humble means and a home full of beautiful children with an innate yearning to throw electronic devices into bodies of water.
Searching
It was trial and error from there, for longer than I like to admit. I dabbled in devices like the Nokia X2, which was quite good until a button gave out and there was no recourse for repair. Another was the Nokia 800 Tough, which was a beast of a thing, which could withstand family life better than most, but again, was clunky to text on, as much as I appreciated its rugged charms.
It all changed when I stumbled across an Android app called Lessphone, which reduced the home page of any phone to a simple, monotone screen with a limited range of apps listed in plain text. Combined with a stripped back set of apps, this minimalist launcher, that by its very nature eliminated the rest of the alluring options in the Android ecosystem, was perfect. I trialled it on a cheap, superceded HTC One M7 (which had been released about six years ago), before a dead spot in the screen and an outrageous ghost touch issue convinced me I had to stop trying to score the absolute cheapest option available to make this work. I recently bought a decent, entry level Motorola M6 that was new, locally purchased from a bricks and mortar store, so if anything goes wrong (again), I’m covered.
As you can imagine, my long suffering wife did not look kindly on a seemingly endless cavalcade of cheap and inefficient phones appearing, one after the other. She justifiably asked how this was ‘keeping it simple,’ when I was perpetually searching for the next best option? And she was right. I can be covetous by nature, and having a problem to solve is almost more alluring that actually finding the right fit. But I’ve found it, and finally, am at peace about it. I have the Motorola M6 set up with Lessphone on it, brandishing the following apps: Audible / BOM Weather / HERE WeGo / Otter / Spotify / Signal / Slack / Universalis.
I’ve also turned the colour off, using the Android developer options, using instructions easily found on the internet. Texting, photos and such are now an absolute breeze. The phone is functional, efficient and pretty well boring. There is nothing to draw me to it unless I’m actually going to listen to something, or communicate with someone. The difference is remarkable, and as such, my capacity for prayer, reading, conversation and much else have been bolstered by (finally) reclaiming the time I would have spent hunched over the darn thing.
Self Imposed Limitation
Again, the gains aren’t a given, let me tell you. There has been more than one relapse into mindless, habitual gravitation to screens and scrolling, which is easy enough to do when you have other devices at hand whenever you need them. I may not have had a fully functioning smartphone, but did have a iPad, desktop and laptop computers available to me whenever I needed them. And the habitual checking of social media can be transposed into other mediums, such as email, too. Tim Ferriss’ advice to schedule and check it only once or twice a day is useful in this instance, if it’s a discipline you can stick to.
Curbing internet use was important to me, so I’ve been using Freedom.to for a years now, which allows me to trigger or schedule deliberate blocks of time when the internet is blocked. This has been incredibly useful for writing, exercise, and to be blunt, giving more focused time to my marriage. I have a daily block scheduled from 9pm, so I can’t get lost in online shopping, or trawling through my favouring blogs and websites indefinitely. I can easily read a book, or work on my own writing, without the constant lure of the online world calling me. Setting up website exceptions allow me to access my own blogs’ posting and admin faculties, so I’m all good to go on that front, without the other distractions. Furthermore, I no longer have to grapple with the decision fatigue of deciding whether or not to go online or not. It’s just not an available option, and I’m better off for it.
Leaping on to the iPad throughout the day became a terrible habit at times, to seemingly get things done. The frustrating thing about it is that I was literally doing things that I needed to attend to. The problem was though, the way I’d hit them all, scattershot, throughout the day, rather than focusing one set block of time on attending to these online chores, and living life otherwise for the rest of the day. The iPad was far too fast and easy, so I finally actioned the best strategy I had at hand.
I sold it.
Privacy
Recent public discourse has increasingly heightened awareness around the importance of privacy and personal agency in the digital realm. The changing user agreement for WhatsApp has triggered an absolute exodus from the platform, with myself counted amongst those who’ve left it behind. I’d already made a couple of changes which I’ll cover first. The ways in which targeted advertising has increasingly encroached into our spaces and consciousness cannot be ignored. When Google offer ‘free’ services such as their search engine and email, we can no longer pretend that we’re not the commodity being bought and sold. As such, a few simple changes should help reclaim your digital autonomy, and here’s a few suggestions I can recommend from experience.
Browser and Search Engine
Easy and wonderful options here are Brave as a browser, and Duck Duck Go as a search engine. Both are built around the core value and principle of privacy, sharing nothing of your user experience and data with advertisers. Brave easily imports bookmarks and such from other browsers such as Chrome, and puts the user first, rather than being beholden to advertising revenue.
Big Tech’s manipulation of truth, news and the freedom of expression has become clearly emboldened by the recent presidential election outcome. Twitter banning the president of the United States, and Amazon shutting down Parler are clear cases in point that the gloves are off and the days ahead are not going to be easy for conservative individuals and outlets. An interesting experiment you can try is to search the same terms in both Google and Duck Duck Go and see how the results are listed and ranked. Try searching for ‘Catholic Church’ and see what you find.
Email and Instant Messaging
In regards to email, I’ve been really pleased with my migration over to Protonmail, from Gmail. Based in Switzerland, Protonmail is focused on providing a highly secure, end to end encrypted email service that is unswervingly committed to the privacy of its users. A promising sign is that it’s a paid service, meaning that if you’re committed enough to your own privacy, and are willing to pay for it, your data won’t be trawled through and sold off to the highest bidder. They also have a great import service for you to bring over all your email from another service (like Gmail), and can manage multiple email accounts, including those from your own domains (like letters@wristwatchesandradios.com).
Like many others, I’ve made the move over to Signal for my messages and group chats. It’s an obvious choice and delivers on what it promises: fully encrypted messaging with absolutely no compromise to make you and your data the commodity. WhatsApp’s relationship with Facebook was always going to compromise it eventually, and they’ve shown their hand quite blatantly, with fascinating results and a significant loss in revenue and market share.
Begin with the End in Mind
At the end of the day, I want to be able to use these tools as I need, without compromising my attention, focus, privacy and integrity. They need to serve me, without selling me out, particularly to a rising cohort of technocrats who seem happy enough to distort election results and quash open and honest discourse in the name of progressive banality. I need my phone to be able to reach family and friends quickly and easily, without an endless array of notifications gnawing away at my attention.
Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. I pray you can use some of the advice and strategies above to find more silence, space, privacy and peace, which can be given to prayer, to family, to art, music and literature. A new day seems to be dawning, in which we can reconcile the practicality of the technology with the privacy and dignity that is inherent to our place in God’s creation. Let it not be for nothing, without making the changes that can help you and your loved ones temper the technology, lest it conquer you.
By Gaetano Carcarello