11 - Why We Love Our Phones: A Case Study in the Aesthetics of Gadgets

Summary

Abstract

This essay reflects on using a cell phone, evoking broader claims about our relationship to gadgets in general, arguing that despite (or rather in addition to) people's ubiquitous claims about their psychological dependence on their cellphones for practical life, we love our phones for the same reason we love most things: for their beauty and for our possession of them. The chapter argues that function follows previous forms at least as much as form follows function. It then considers the handheld quality of handheld gadgets. Furthermore, we enjoy our phones partly because of the enormous breadth of experience they pack into a tiny form. The paper also considers the particular comforting experience we get from fidgeting with our phones. We value our phones for their ability to etch and record our personal interactions, and their allowing us to handily carry our personhood for us.

Keywords: mobile phones, cell phones, gadgets, design aesthetics

Introduction

This past summer Samsung released their new “Z fold 3” and “Z flip 3” phones, affordable, widely advertised smartphones with folding touchscreens. The “fold” folds lengthwise and the “flip” widthwise, mimicking all the functions of a regular Galaxy smartphone, a mini-tablet, and a flip phone, respectively. As far as I know, these phones do not add any phone, text, or data functionality to the Galaxy (YouTube reviewer Marques Brownlee rightly states: “If this is really the future of … smartphones, … then folding in half [has to be] just another feature”). So, why has Samsung produced these, and why are people buying them? It can only be for purely aesthetic reasons: they’re cool, pleasant to the touch, and in the case of the flip, nostalgic: Brownlee says: “kind of like a throwback to the flip phones of yesteryear.” As I’ll argue here, the new Samsung products suggest that phone design, in general, has long since abandoned the modernist mantra, “form follows function.”

In fact, few of our favorite gadgets have ever obeyed that mantra. Instead, as Lewis Mumford states in his magnificent Technics and Civilization, function as often as not follows form:

What happened here [with the automobile] unfortunately, is what happened in almost every department of industrial life. The new machines [of the twentieth century] followed not their own pattern but the pattern laid down by previous economic and technical structures.