Sorry, Mr. Wallace

David Foster Wallace’s This is Water is a senior-year-of-highschool/college classic. Wallace introduces the new graduates to some pervasive perversities of American adult life; making a choice about what to pay attention to, he argues, is a matter of life and death. This point is seems rather depressive (if true), and is tragically underlined by his suicide in 2008.

I think things have changed: most people, I argue, don’t have the chance to make any such decisions anymore. Maybe I’m biased because of my particularly aggressive internet addiction, but I bet phones have pretty much taken away any paying attention one might choose to do.

It’s totally unclear if this is just another hit-piece on phones. I don’t know if it’s good to have to stand in a line and be bored and angry, or if it’s better to spend your time on your phone looking at things on the internet. I’m sure it’s probably pretty dependent on what you’re looking at.

So: if it’s a matter of life and death to pay attention to the right things, but we aren’t making a choice anymore — because phones are the easy defauly, what does this really mean? Well: the easy choice about what to pay attention to no longer the terrible world of the line. Instead, it’s the possibly amazing world of the phone. So there’s hope that the life and death choice that we have to make is taken by a default that allows us to be much happier. We just have to make sure to design our phones to lead people to the water, so to speak; if you’re making the choices for me, please make good ones.