The iPhone 5 is the Message

The announcement of the iPhone 5, or 4s or 4G, or whatever it's called, will occur in about 3 hours. With the pending revelation of the object that has inspired such hysteria and obsession from around the blogosphere and popular news media, I thought it apropos to reflect on how much the medium has truly become the message today. While I don't expect anything grand from this latest iteration- a better camera, quicker loading times, maybe some voice integration- I, along with a shitload of other people, have been thinking about how the iPhone has ushered in a new era of wiring our brains to communication technologies. I had an IPhone for about two years, but even without one, I've retained the habit of constantly looking down to my phone, checking my email ten times a day instead of one or two, of expecting to know the name of any catchy song I hear in an instant. When it is constantly accessible, information takes on the quality of a drug, altering the way we interact with the world around us. I don't believe this is limited to phones either. Steven Totilo, writing on Kotaku about the Wii U, reflects not only on the influence of technology on our lives, but how our lives and relations have changed to such a degree as to demand adaptations from future technoligies that wish to appeal to our new techno-social structure:

For all its faults, Nintendo is probably making the right gaming console for our times. Who sits on a couch with other people in order to all focus on the same thing anymore? Do people really gather to watch a TV show together or have dinner? Think about it. Is their attention undivided and on the same thing? Of course not. At least one person is checking their iPhone, logging onto Facebook, reading a text or sending an e-mail. The globally rich society that plays video games is the same globally rich society that in the year 2011 always already has a private screen in the palm of their hands. (emphasis mine)

Subtly drawing on Louis Althusser's "always already" concept, the gist of which is that all of us are subjects of our society's ideologies before we can really consciously think about whether we are or not, Totilo adds a new technological demention to Althusser, updating subjecthood for the twenty-first century. In the case of the do-everything-for you iPhone and its second-class bretheren, the Android phones, we are already in the grip of the machine, and it in ours, before the first questioning editorial about what might have been lost is even published.
And so, with today's announcement, it seems that quite literally, "medium is the message," or, more elaborately, "the 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs" (McLuhan 8). We are not excited for the announcement of the phone for what its call-making potential, but for the imagined totality of increased access to communicative habits and the imagined, potentially impossible expectations of something that will revolutionize our lives and the way that we interact with our environment, something that will "shape and control the scale and form of human association and action" (9). Beyond my theoretical speculation, neuro-psychologists are starting to study these effects. The New York Times recently described a study that showed immense influence on emotions and reactions that we generally tend to think of as immensely personal, even spiritual:

Earlier this year, I carried out an fMRI experiment to find out whether iPhones were really, truly addictive, no less so than alcohol, cocaine, shopping or video games. In conjunction with the San Diego-based firm MindSign Neuromarketing, I enlisted eight men and eight women between the ages of 18 and 25. Our 16 subjects were exposed separately to audio and to video of a ringing and vibrating iPhone. 

In each instance, the results showed activation in both the audio and visual cortices of the subjects’ brains. In other words, when they were exposed to the video, our subjects’ brains didn’t just see the vibrating iPhone, they “heard” it, too; and when they were exposed to the audio, they also “saw” it. This powerful cross-sensory phenomenon is known as synesthesia. 

But most striking of all was the flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion. The subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member.

If even a part of this is the case, no content or function of the phone has a chance of valuation at the level of the phone itself. Today, the phone is the message. From our vantage point in 2011, the reconfiguration of our minds and social relations hasn't yet begun. We are still living in a world shaped largely before the internet, before personal computers and before smart phones. Any one born in the last ten years will live in a world where these are ubiquitous and unquestioned, much as I can hardly imagine life without electricity. It's kind of exciting and maybe a little sad. I miss looking at the same screen as everyone else I know.

See also:
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Singularity
Image via iHackBlog