Ode To My iPhone: How Having My iPhone Pickpocketed Released My Inner Cyborg
In 2004 at the age of ten, I was gifted my first mobile phone, the Siemens A51. It had a curved silhouette with a light-up keypad and I begged my parents intermittently to buy me £10 credit top-ups so I could excitedly text my friends. I owned many phones over the years, mostly second-hand and majoritively clunky with stickers all over them. I distinctly remember the panicked feeling of accidentally clicking on the ‘Wireless Application Protocol’ button, subsequently seeing the loading symbol and frantically pressing BACK to refrain from browsing the costly and elusive internet. Upon finally getting my Nokia 6300 at the age of 13, I channelled my main character energy and spend hours with the phone propped up on my desk recording various performances.
During my early teenage years, following a brief rivalry between Blackberry and iPhone, the latter unequivocally won. iPhone’s revolutionary technology and its innovative functions irreversibly altered the way we communicated. Humanity went from messaging and calling each other sparingly to being socially plugged in across multiple platforms with constant accessibility to a wealth of information, unbound by geographical restrictions. Notably, iPhones became a material representation of so many things - a fashion statement, a symbol of privilege, and the various models evidenced the gap between classes. Today, of course, we are now fully accustomed to smartphones being used for everything from communication, work, socialising, relaxation, dating, learning, etc. As well as the obvious connection to friends and family, I use my phone for entertainment, a quick and convenient Google search, checking when my period is due, paying for things, measuring how far I’ve walked and so much more. With capabilities I could never have dreamed of when I first held that Siemens phone in my hand at the age of 10, mobile technology is inevitably entangled in our daily lives.
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I had my iPhone stolen last month. Upon the dreaded realisation that it was missing from my pocket, I frantically asked my boyfriend to ring it, only to discover it had been turned off - I knew it was gone immediately. I’d had it a few months, the pink iPhone 13. I’d never owned phones I’d truly lusted over before (the Motorola RAZR or the iPhone 3G) and after years of second-hand and refurbished models, I committed to a three-year contract with one of the latest versions. After it was taken, my friends sent their condolences, sharing similar personal experiences and stories. They spoke of the violation, the emotional turmoil, as well as the obvious financial loss. I tried to tell myself it was just a lump of metal - material possessions were replaceable, etc. but, I truly felt like a part of me had been taken.
In a 1988 study on consumer behaviour in The Journal of Consumer Research, Russell Belk explored the way we incorporate persons, places, and things into identity. In such a way that a child does with a favourite teddy bear, he put forward that our possessions play a part in the formation of our identity by pertaining to the self. Media scholar Marshall McLuhan developed this further by declaring ‘all media are extensions of man’, noting that media can extend the self across time and space - as a telephone can extend our hearing across the world. Although these works emerged prior to widespread mobile use, the smartphone has since been regularly conceived as an extension of self. Even more so with its ability to disseminate information, the extension of self into virtual realms is entangled in daily communication and self-presentation. So when my phone was unexpectedly taken, I felt like this ‘extension’ had suddenly been cut off.
Another thing that struck me when my phone was taken was the muscle memory of reaching for it that remained for days afterward. Its physical existence was markedly engrained into my bodily memory. When we swipe on our phone, this gesture is inherent, our bodies have been trained to automatically extend in this way and form a habit. In fact, in 2019 Grant Bollmer highlighted that we don’t view a phone as a material object until it is no longer functioning as expected, for example, if a call drops or the phone won’t turn on. This suggests that the time when a smartphone is most present as a material object in itself is when its bodily extension has been disrupted. From the action of swiping, to contactless payment, face recognition, to touch id, our physicality so seamlessly intertwines with a phone that when it ceases to work as we expect it to, we are reminded of its mystifying technical functions. Another time I become increasingly aware of the machinic quality of my phone is when I use it in the dark. The stark illumination of its screen casting light upon my face seems to heighten the darkness around me, enhancing the surreal notion that this small lump of metal is transporting me across time and space. The corporeal connection we have with a phone dwindles too as its cool metallic surface warms under touch until equilibrium is reached. Occasionally the device overheats and we are snapped out of the spell, remembering its gadgety essence.
“Thousands of photos are captured and stored with our smartphones acting as a highly personal digital archive of our past selves, memories, and experiences.”
Central to postmodern literature, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, an essay published in the Socialist Review in 1985, used the figure of the cyborg to depict the intimate relationship between people and technology. Rejecting imposed societal boundaries, Haraway made an argument for the cyborg as ‘a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality’, detailing the shift in human identity the had occurred through our collective convergence with technology. When my phone was taken, it felt like an invasive act beyond the thieving of my personal property. My photos, messages and so much more of me existed within that phone. We all carry around a surfeit of digital *stuff* on our phones which ultimately adds to our connection with them. Thousands of photos are captured and stored with our smartphones acting as a highly personal digital archive of our past selves, memories, and experiences.
As a constant bodily companion, I sleep next to my iPhone, take it with me to the bathroom, and carry it close to me, always. When I was kindly gifted a replacement by a friend, I set it up so that it seamlessly intertwined with my body once again. Although the physical phone was not the same, my social media profiles were as I had left them, my iCloud photos popped up for me to scroll through, and the majority of my stored information was immediately available. This represented the bits of me that existed beyond my body or phone, a kind of personalised atemporal electromagnetic energy that, as Belk theorised, plays a part in the formation of my identity. Whilst traditional tools throughout history have extended the physical self, through smartphones and their functions, we are now able to extend the intangible self, echoing Haraway’s notion of the cyborg as, ‘a condensed image of both imagination and material reality'. In a culture fully saturated with technology, we are already assimilated, and I am embracing the potential for human development - as Haraway famously declared ‘I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess’.
Words: Rose Coffey
