At the Bottom of the Bay

We were boarding 70 students for their high school prom, greeting them as they stepped aboard the boat. Most of the passengers had boarded, when a young woman stopped, looked at her empty purse with its unlatched hasp, and said, “That [splash] was my phone!” and then burst into tears. My empathy for her was strong and immediate, as her expression went from disbelief to panic to grief. I had misplaced my phone six months earlier, and understood the emotions. Some of you have likely had similar experiences.

What happened on that cruise would not have happened 25 years ago. The 2007 advent of the iPhone, and more generally of smartphones thereafter, has been a boon for communications, creativity, and collaboration, but has come at the price of technological addiction and co-dependence. Far from making us more resilient, it has made us weaker and more fragile. But how many of us would buy our souls back for the mythical memory of simpler times?

The irreversibility of technological advancement came into harsh relief during the Arab Spring of 2011, when Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak shut down the nation’s internet and mobile services to disrupt protestors’ communications. The shutdown lasted only five days, being quickly lifted due to its impact on the nation’s commerce and economy. Whatever you call it: a blessing and a curse, a double-edged sword, or a two-headed monster, technology comes with a price to pay.

There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. — Thomas Sowell

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. It is at the core of what we are doing at the SSC. It’s just that it needs to be used responsibly, with safeguards and backups, and not with overdependence. On multiple occasions people have suggested I let ChatGPT write this newsletter’s spotlights and blogs. To me, this would be like going to the gym and asking your personal trainer to lift the weights for you. The cognitive exercise matters. Without it our brains become soft and mushy, much as our muscles do without physical exercise. Not to mention the gray, non-specific, drivel of most AI compositions. While I do use AI for analysis and feedback, I have always written my own essays, and will continue to do so.

As for the girl, once she was with someone, I left to call the company’s owner. I asked about having a diver search for her phone, whereon, he promised to do it himself the next day. I returned to reassure the girl that most phones are waterproof, and that we would do all we could to recover her property. It was a good try, but she remained distraught throughout the cruise. The next day the owner sent me a simple text, saying “Success!” He had recovered the phone in 20 feet of water, bringing it miraculously back to life once he put it on a charger. He drove it to the girl’s home and returned it to her, creating a happy ending for a lesson she will never forget.

Author’s note: This is a true story. It happened less than a week ago, and perfectly captures the relationship we have developed with technology. I want to give a shout-out to Morgan Proescher and Luxe Cruises and Events for bringing the story to such a good conclusion. Not everyone would have done what he did.