I do not have a mobile, and I do not plan to acquire them in the coming years. Bashny.Net

If I had to choose a subject that symbolizes the 2010s, my list would be the only one contestant. IPhone - the emblem, top, Empire State Building, this strange accelerating time in which all concerned to be more tightly connected with each other. I work towards a common thread. I hated smartphones. I do not have a mobile, and I do not plan to acquire them in the coming years.



I was freed from cell phones a year ago. All my life I was losing them one by one, following buying cheaper. I finished cracked nokiey clamshell-styled in shades of Hello Kitty, which my mother put her in a box of junk in the garage. This Nokia lasted longer than others, but when she died, and I could not bring myself to get a new phone. We are the mobile industry plays a staring, waiting, who will surrender first.

It all started when I lost smartphone with 3G in the second month of the contract year and a half. I had another year to pay 26 pounds in a month and could not afford to immediately buy a new one - it was the first generation of smart phones, fucking expensive.



In the end I came out cheaper than renting a regular phone without the bells and whistles, and continue to pay for 3G, which I never used.

This incident ruined my relationship to the operators and pushed to the path of opposition. I came out of the communication of the arms race, in which the rest of the world was involved.



Veteran Hello Kitty I squander on Christmas corporate party in Soho. I thought that there is no place to fall below, will now have to give up and get a credit iPhones, like everyone else, give up and stuck in the matrix. But then I imagined the red tape in another operator's office, where I listen to explanations of terms from the manager to the Justin Bieber haircut and patterned Laufer, and then give him the fuck yourself, because the smartphone - is "an important part of your life» ...

I would burst, as in the biblical vision of the picture of Cecil B. DeMille, the crowd of sinners, kissing their chains, shouting: "Yes, let me sign another contract, give me the newest iPhone, I need more slavery!" . But as an experiment, I decided to see what would happen if I do not do.



It was like something magical summer when I rented a bungalow on the beach, there to think through his new book. The house did not have electricity, I did not have a laptop, and the network was not caught at all. Luxurious, royal privacy. I could not be disturbed, I was serene, just me, notepad and endless blue sea and the expanse of the words themselves showered upon me, filling the blank pages.

I'm a writer, I work in the antipode of social media. So, what I want to tell you, dear reader, passes strict quality control.



My girlfriend once on Friday night saw a tweet that her friend "A couple of cans of Stella, noodles from the wok, nishtyak is night" has been brought to favorites 64 times. Social networks - it is about people who can not shut up, even in private.

"Of course, I do not have facebook - I'm a poet" - the comic sidekick long phrase stuck in my head. This irony has some truth. Like painting and other noble arts, poetry in the modern world it is something special for entirely opposite reasons than before. The frescoes in the medieval churches struck because they were the only affordable holiday colors and harmonious beauty in the midst of the ugliness of dirty streets in the gray-brown world of the poor.

Today painting - still sacred, but for another reason.



Today, people like never before to fight for their mental sovereignty, for their thoughts, with the time, space and silence, in which he can think about them.

In contrast, junk fuda eye art today - an island of peace and truth, which lies between attracted waves of digital vomit. Just work, and a few lines of graceful prose resonates with the soul of the reader in the midst of shelling its mimimishkami, LOL and nishtyak at night noodle.

In the hall of the Italian Baroque National Gallery in London hangs a mysterious painting entitled "Philosophy", in 1645 he wrote Salvator Rosa. Depicted in the picture a man staring at you, his face expresses the relentless pursuit of insight into things. In his hands he holds a marble plaque with the inscription: "Shut up, if what you're gonna say, will not be better silence." How many Twitter users would appreciate this idea?

The symptom of the disease of our age - that we reject this maxim. Think of the interview neighbors and colleagues, people who were pedophiles and serial killers. What they have in common? Setting the criminal always surprised by one and the same: "He seemed a normal guy, but he was always so quiet, closed in itself" - as if this is some clear evidence, proof of deviance, which all missed. What is really strange and wild in people today - things like hysteria about events in the X-Factor.



One of the most famous moments in the Book of Revelation, better known as the Book of the Apocalypse - is that before the end of the world, no one could neither sell nor communicate without the sign of the Antichrist, the number 666. It is unpleasant to scare you, but the Apocalypse will not fall down on us all of a sudden - We have already entered it, without noticing it, like sleepwalkers. WWW before the name of a social network or online service shopping - these are the same three sixes. In Hebrew, by the way, as well as in the Latin alphabet, the letter may represent the number. I will not delve into the conspiracy, I was just amused by this little poetic coincidence.



You're bound to Like and worried about their absence, although they do not entirely necessary - do not need the approval of the little-known people, from which you start to depend on. Friends with whom you're really close, you start to write when it suits them, taking you from the case, which requires concentration - instead of responding quickly, you hurt them and suffer from feelings of guilt. Buying a smartphone, you sign a new social contract: you're always connected, so - is always available. Gipersvyazannost kills the sense of personal space. This is another form of tyranny technology: your time and your head will no longer belong to you.

Getting a decent job, the person receives the corporate machine and telephone. It seems a privilege, but in fact it is a circuit that makes it available 24/7 to the employer. Technologies designed to free us, become our gold cage.



One time my number is blocked because of an error of the bank I could not make monthly fee. When my bank finally turned the money, I called the operator. After desyatishagovoy voice recognition procedure (besyaschaya procedure if you northern accent, like me), I finally got a chance to hear the living voice of the Indian. I pressed the button, but instead of a Hindu I was transferred to the first stage of the voice recognition. "Sorry, your number is blocked," again and again the robot. The operator was so greedy that did not even give me a chance to unlock it, allowing me to support services. I took a deep breath and bit his tongue to keep swore.

The next attempt consisted of seven minutes, "then the something for something", then in the middle of entering a 16-digit number of my credit card call was interrupted. In the building where I rented an apartment, reception was at the bunker. At this point I obscenely screamed and threw the phone against the wall. "The future's bright, the future's Orange" - that was the slogan of my statement. In fact, the future turned out to bondage stupid robots and plastic fragments on the concrete floor.

The actress and playwright Cornelia Otis Skinner noted that analogues of the French word "flâneur" in English, no, because "in the Anglo-Saxon culture, there is no analogue to this Gallic type of character - careless pedestrians who are unknown liabilities and urgency. Being rich, do not waste, including their time, so to fully enjoy the world. "

I do not agree with the fact that the Anglo-Saxons are not inclined to such a pastime. London if specially designed for long walks, and many happy hours of my life I have just thoughtless flanirovaniyu the streets of this vast metropolis, the possibility of getting lost in it and feel the pulse of life around them. The handset is put an end to this inspired mood.



Now that I have no phone, I have nothing else distracts from life. About the meetings I arrange the old fashioned way: appoint a date at 6 in the pub, and just be there at the time, hell, it's not so easy. Mobiles steal our personal time and make us self-sufficient people of infantile dependent mindless chatter with other such. They undermine our will and organization - what respect the agreement, if at any time you can correct its decision sms Coy? The tyranny of technology makes us emotionally unstable children in many, many ways.

I'm not saying that after parting with your smartphone, my life has become better at everything. Sometimes I'm in the middle of the associated communications world like a wet swimmer under the piercing wind. The other day my girl got drunk, picked up my purse and went to bed, and I then had three o'clock to go home from the bar on foot. But these occasional inconveniences outweigh the fact that I was left alone I do not want people that I am again able to think and work productively in silence without interruption on stupidity. And again I feel the king of his own head.