El mundo en tu bolsillo: cómo el teléfono móvil cambió todo

Pero también mira el teléfono en el bar.

But they also look at the phone in the bar.

People still talk, but they also look at the phone in the bar.

There's something almost melancholy about that sentence, and I think anyone listening right now has had that exact experience: you're at dinner with someone, they're physically present, and then they're not.

Es que mis hijos hablan con amigos por el teléfono, no en la calle.

The thing is, my kids talk to friends on the phone, not in the street.

His kids talk to their friends on the phone, not in the street.

And that is a seismic shift.

My generation, we made plans by actually showing up.

You'd agree to meet at a corner at three o'clock, and if you were late, tough luck.

There was no 'I'll text you when I'm nearby.' You were just there or you weren't.

Bueno, ahora nadie llega a tiempo porque el teléfono permite eso.

Well, now nobody arrives on time because the phone allows that.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] He's absolutely right.

The smartphone, among its many achievements, has basically destroyed punctuality as a social norm.

Because you can always send a message saying you're five minutes away, even when you're twenty minutes away.

La verdad es que yo uso el teléfono para el trabajo también.

The truth is I use the phone for work too.

Siempre, todo el día.

Always, all day long.

He uses the phone for work all day, always.

And this is where it gets historically interesting to me.

Because for most of human history, when you left the office, you left work.

The physical separation was the boundary.

The smartphone abolished that boundary completely.

Sí, mi jefe escribe mensajes a las once de la noche.

Yes, my boss sends messages at eleven at night.

Es un problema.

It is a problem.

His boss sends messages at eleven at night.

I think every person listening to this just nodded.

This is one of the most profound and underappreciated changes in working life: the expectation of permanent availability.

And it happened so fast that labor law, culture, and basic human psychology haven't caught up.

En España hay una ley ahora.

In Spain there is a law now.

El trabajo no puede llamar por la noche.

Work cannot call at night.

Spain actually passed a law about this, a right to digital disconnection from work.

The extraordinary thing is that we needed a law to protect people from something that didn't even exist twenty years ago.

France did something similar.

It shows how fast governments had to scramble to respond.

Bueno, pero la gente no respeta la ley.

Well, but people don't respect the law.

Todos leen los mensajes igual.

Everyone reads the messages anyway.

Everyone reads the messages anyway.

And here is where I want to get into something deeper, because this isn't just about work habits.

There's a psychological dimension to this that I find genuinely troubling.

The phone doesn't just inform you, it interrupts you, constantly, and there's real research now suggesting that the constant interruption is changing how we think.

A ver, yo no puedo leer un libro por mucho tiempo ahora.

Well, I can't read a book for a long time now.

Antes, sí.

Before, I could.

He can't read a book for as long as he used to.

And I heard this from a literature professor at UT Austin who said the same thing about her own students.

Their ability to sit with a long text, to hold a sustained argument in their heads for hours, it's getting shorter.

And she thinks the phone is part of why.

Es que el teléfono da información muy rápida.

The thing is the phone gives information very fast.

Todo es rápido y corto.

Everything is fast and short.

Everything is fast and short.

Which is, by the way, an interesting thing for two people on a long podcast to be discussing.

But look, I think Octavio's pointing at something real.

The smartphone trains you to expect resolution quickly: swipe, tap, done.

A novel doesn't work that way.

Neither does a long negotiation, or a marriage.

Mira, la cámara del teléfono también cambia mucho.

Look, the camera on the phone also changes a lot.

Yo hago fotos de todo.

I take photos of everything.

The camera.

Yes.

He takes photos of everything, and so do I.

I take photos of restaurant menus so I can look at them again.

I take photos of street signs in cities I'm visiting.

When I was covering stories in Beirut in the nineties, I had a roll of twenty-four exposures, and I thought hard before I pressed the shutter.

La verdad es que yo tengo diez mil fotos en el teléfono.

The truth is I have ten thousand photos on my phone.

No miro muchas.

I don't look at many of them.

Ten thousand photos, and he doesn't look at most of them.

I think that is actually one of the stranger cultural shifts: we document our lives with unprecedented intensity, and then almost never revisit the documentation.

There's a philosopher, Byung-Chul Han, who argues that photographing an experience actually replaces living it.

You're processing through the camera, not through your own presence.

Bueno, en los conciertos todo el mundo tiene el teléfono arriba.

Well, at concerts everyone has their phone up in the air.

Es muy raro.

It is very strange.

At concerts, everyone has their phone up.

I know exactly what he means, I was at a Springsteen show a few years ago and half the crowd was watching him through a four-inch screen they were holding at arm's length.

You're there, physically, at this extraordinary live event, and you're mediating it through a device.

Es que quieren compartir el video con amigos.

The thing is they want to share the video with friends.

Es para las redes sociales.

It is for social media.

They want to share it on social media.

And this is, I think, a genuinely new form of human motivation.

For most of history, you had an experience for yourself, maybe you told people about it later.

Now there's this third party present at every moment: the imagined audience.

You're always already thinking about how it will look when you share it.

Sí, mis hijos tienen Instagram.

Yes, my kids have Instagram.

Ellos piensan mucho en las fotos.

They think a lot about their photos.

His kids think a lot about their photos.

The curation of the self, as a continuous project.

I find it fascinating and a little exhausting.

When I was a young journalist, your reputation built over years, through work.

Now a teenager can construct, and destroy, a public identity before breakfast.

A ver, el teléfono también es bueno para muchas cosas, Fletcher.

Well, the phone is also good for many things, Fletcher.

Es importante.

That is important.

He's pushing back.

The phone is also good for many things, he says, and he's right, and I should be more careful about sounding like a grumpy fifty-five-year-old who misses paper maps.

So: tell me the good stuff, Octavio.

Bueno, mi madre tiene setenta años.

Well, my mother is seventy years old.

Ella habla con nosotros por video todos los días.

She talks to us by video every day.

His mother is seventy, and she video-calls the family every day.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

The maintenance of close relationships across distance, it has genuinely transformed things.

I have a granddaughter in Seattle and I see her face every week.

That was science fiction when I was her father's age.

Mira, en países pobres el teléfono es el banco.

Look, in poor countries the phone is the bank.

Muchas personas usan esto.

Many people use this.

In poorer countries, the phone is the bank.

This is a huge point and it doesn't get talked about enough in the Western conversation about smartphones.

M-Pesa in Kenya, for instance: mobile money services gave banking access to millions of people who had never had a formal bank account.

The smartphone leapfrogged entire systems of infrastructure.

La verdad es que el teléfono también da voz a personas pequeñas, no famosas.

The truth is the phone also gives a voice to ordinary people, not famous ones.

It gives a voice to ordinary people.

And as a journalist, I have complicated feelings about this.

On one hand, citizen video has documented atrocities that would otherwise have been denied: I think of the Arab Spring, of Black Lives Matter in the United States, of ordinary people becoming witnesses in a way that genuinely changed history.

On the other hand, the same tools spread misinformation at terrifying speed.

Sí, hay mucha información falsa en el teléfono.

Yes, there is a lot of false information on the phone.

Es un problema grande.

It is a big problem.

A big problem.

I covered several elections in the past decade where disinformation on smartphones was a direct factor in the outcome.

And here's what troubles me most: the platform that carries the lie and the platform that carries the correction are exactly the same.

Same screen, same format, same speed.

The brain can't always tell the difference.

A ver, y los jóvenes aprenden todo del teléfono ahora.

Well, and young people learn everything from the phone now.

No de los profesores.

Not from teachers.

Young people learn everything from the phone, not from teachers.

Which is a sentence that a teacher of mine, a brilliant history professor, would have found deeply alarming.

And yet: I learned how to fix a leaking pipe in my house last year entirely from a YouTube video on my phone, at eleven at night, and it worked perfectly.

So there's real power in that too.

Bueno, yo aprendo inglés en el teléfono también.

Well, I learn English on the phone too.

Un poco.

A little.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] He learns English on his phone, which is how we met our listeners today, so let's not complain about that.

Right, so as we get toward the end here, I want to ask the harder question.

Not what changed, but whether we actually chose any of this, or whether it just happened to us.

Es que nadie pregunta, solo usa el teléfono.

The thing is nobody asks, they just use the phone.

Es normal muy rápido.

It becomes normal very fast.

Nobody asked, they just used it.

And it became normal very fast.

I think this is a critical point.

The adoption of the smartphone was so rapid, and the benefits so immediately obvious, that the costs were practically invisible until they were already structural.

We said yes to the camera and the map without reading the fine print on the attention economy.

Mira, mi hijo de doce años no tiene teléfono.

Look, my twelve-year-old son doesn't have a phone.

Otros padres piensan que soy raro.

Other parents think I am strange.

His twelve-year-old son doesn't have a smartphone.

And other parents think he's strange for that.

The extraordinary thing is that this is already a minority position: the choice not to give your young child a smartphone is now the exceptional decision, the one that requires justification.

We've inverted the default.

La verdad es que yo no sé si el teléfono es bueno o malo.

The truth is I don't know if the phone is good or bad.

Solo es diferente.

It is just different.

He doesn't know if it's good or bad.

Just different.

And honestly, I think that's the most honest thing you can say, and it's the place I keep arriving at too.

We are living inside a transformation whose full consequences we genuinely cannot see yet.

We are the generation that will be studied.

Bueno, ahora yo miro el teléfono para la hora.

Well, now I check the phone for the time.

Tenemos que terminar.

We have to finish.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] He checks the phone for the time, which is a perfect way to end this.

Look: the smartphone changed how we work, how we remember, how we relate to each other, how we learn, how we navigate, how we document our own lives, and possibly how we think.

That is not a small list.

Gracias, Octavio.

Until next time.

Hasta pronto.

See you soon.

Y apaga el teléfono un poco.

And turn off the phone a little.

Es bueno para ti.

It is good for you.