Kill the computer

‘Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.’

Frank Herbert, from ‘Dune’

Flip it. Bag it. Mute it. Dock it. Bop it. Twist it. Alright, the last two I made up. But the first four represent half of the TU Delft’s new campaign to encourage students to use their phones less, as eloquently stated in the campaign’s official AI-generated YouTube video,  that you’re supposed to listen to… on your phone?

Nevertheless, I think the campaign started off on solid ground. Thankfully, the organisers explicitly try to avoid patronising students and support their desire to go offline through nudges, hosting phone-free events, and working with student associations. This is a valuable pursuit. By drawing attention to their compulsive use of mobile phones, some students may break free from the feedback loop for a second and get to ask themselves if this is really something they want to do?

But will it make a meaningful difference, or just leave a superficial mark? Is a campaign that relies on individuals ‘waking up’ and freely making different decisions enough to sever us from our structural dependence on digital devices?

It may be that going offline just doesn’t work anymore

It may be that going offline just doesn’t work anymore. Everyone is online. Everything is online. The campaign correctly states that even pulling out your phone for a second you risk entering the feedback loop of doomscrolling. But lecture halls are posted on MyTUDelft and MyTimetable, and interaction is done with Menti. Communication is received on Outlook and Brightspace (and assignments are clandestinely shared on the group chats). Even just at TU Delft, how can you go offline when the whole world around you is only accessible through apps?

I only share one thing with the venture capitalist Marc Andreesen: the opinion that software is eating the world. For him, it’s a good thing, because he bought in early. But we are the ones who have to live with the consequences, good and bad. The same algorithm that puts your next favourite song into the queue will also drop the most addictive combination of reels with AI-generated Peter Griffin explaining Keynesian economics. The algorithm doesn’t care about what you like. It’s designed to maximise profit and view-time, so it will maximise addiction. What amount of willpower has a chance against billions of dollars’ worth of engineering efforts spent on keeping you glued to the screen?

For now, the overarching systems of the digital economy are outside our control, so individual solutions, while sometimes useful, are palliative at best. To keep the benefits of digitalisation without its downsides, we need to build towards systems that work for us and maximise our well-being rather than for profit and addiction. As students, as citizens, as engineers, we must collectively have a say in the (non-)digital world we build and are part of. We get to choose whether we ultimately tolerate the harm, switch to less painful alternatives, or… kill the computer.