Lamm was a young artist, posting her drawings for 200,000 followers on Instagram and successfully monetizing her artwork through brand endorsements and magazine assignments, when she accidentally typed the wrong password and was locked out of her account for several months. That\u2019s when she realized that her career, as she writes in this accessible manifesto, was \u201cowned by Meta Inc.\u201d The abrupt break\u2014and the accompanying improvement in mental health\u2014transformed the author into an anti-tech activist, permanently logged off her social media accounts and now using a \u201cdumb phone\u201d without a touchscreen, apps, or internet connection. Observing that people today spend an average of nearly five hours a day on their phones, she asks, \u201cWhat would you do with a few extra hours a day?\u2026The point is not necessarily to fill them. The point is to reclaim them from technology.\u201d The first part of the book diagnoses \u201cThe Problem,\u201d with sections such as \u201cOutsourcing Thought,\u201d \u201cThe Cost of Availability,\u201d and \u201cChasing Convenience.\u201d As Lamm herself acknowledges, her analysis is not new: \u201cAuthors have built whole careers on technocriticism.\u201d But, she adds, \u201cAlmost without exception, these authors still own and use the very devices they criticize.\u201d She draws on personal experience when she offers \u201cThe Solution,\u201d with tips for online messaging (you\u2019ll have to do it from a desktop), getting around (write down directions ahead of time, but prepare to get lost sometimes), shooting photographs (get a film camera and take pictures more deliberately), and dual-factor authentication (\u201cthis is one of the trickiest, and most essential, smartphone features to replicate,\u201d she concedes). A section on \u201cThe Downsides of Downgrading\u201d recognizes the very real challenges of giving up a smartphone\u2014not least the \u201cspecial attention and accommodation\u201d required from those around you.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lamm was a young artist, posting her drawings for 200,000 followers on Instagram and successfully monetizing her artwork through brand endorsements and magazine assignments, when she accidentally typed the wrong password and was locked out of her account for several months. That\u2019s when she realized that her career, as she writes in this accessible manifesto, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}