iHuman

I know where the pain in my neck is coming from. I joked in a text to my friend that I had iNeck or an iPhone injury or iHand or whatever. Funny not funny. I used to call the pain in my right arm and shoulder ‘mouse arm’. I don’t do as much visual design as I used to do those aches aren’t as bad anymore. But the neck – and hands – are a different story.

The fine motor skills and specific muscles that allow me to tap tap tap on a thin piece of glass while holding my head at a slight angle are astonishing. And why the fuck am I using them for this? Because it’s here. I’ve fallen into the space of solitude after tidying up living room. I picked up the dusty guitar but realized another pain coming from the big bruise on my arm right where it hits the widest part of the body of the instrument.

I knew I’d I wanted to play, I needed to take out the Taylor. As soon as I held it I wondered when this came into your life. Don, did you have this because of the decade of blood draws and IV’s?

Today nothings wrong with me. Routine blood work. I bruise easily. Not reading into it but it looks nasty and it hurts if it’s being pushed on which this guitar doesn’t do. Thank you.

But back to my neck pain. My iPhone injury. The unintended consequences. For those of us who are fully dexterous, sighted and so inclined, we can really hurt ourselves using all this technology – not just picking on Apple here – it’s a problem on every level. As I sit, about to try to wrap up this weird train of thought I see myself, as a speck of dust in the thing that makes up all of what’s connected. Everything. More than ever. And because of that, awareness, in my conscious state, I have to maintain the ability to be human without this shit. I wonder how long it’ll take before it’s too late and enough humans are more iHuman than not.

Several years ago a woman in a class I was teaching was checking in on her kids during a break. After talking to one of them she said “yeah they hardly pick up the phone but they’ll turtle around all day with the thing”. She was referring to the way a lot of us hold the device and curl onto it. Turtling. Don’t think anyone considered the consequences of a couple decades of using the body that way.

This is where we are just a month or so from 2024. Don’t become an iHuman. And hey Apple, what the fuck? Thought design was your thing.