The Panopticon in My Pocket: Why a Tech Founder Is Dreaming of a Flip Phone

I had a moment the other day that I think everyone has experienced.

I was standing in my kitchen, talking to my friend about how I was finally ready to hunt down this specific vintage Chanel jacket from the 90s runway. I did not type anything into a search bar. I did not visit a reseller site. I just spoke the words into the air.

Two hours later, I opened Instagram. The first ad was for that exact jacket.

We laugh about this. We make jokes about the "FBI agent" living in our webcam. But when you actually stop to think about the infrastructure required to make that ad appear, it is not funny. It is terrifying.

I am a tech founder. I build software for a living. I love innovation. But I am looking at the current state of technology, and I am about one year away from throwing my iPhone into the ocean and buying a Motorola Razr from 2004.

The Smart Home is a Snitch

We have been sold a lie. We were told that "Smart Homes" would make our lives easier.

We were told that a refrigerator that connects to the WiFi is a luxury.

It is not a luxury. It is a snitch.

Why does my fridge need an IP address? Why does my vacuum cleaner need to map the floor plan of my house and send it to a server in the cloud? Why do we have cylinders on our kitchen counters that record our conversations, waiting for a "wake word" that is triggered half the time by the television?

We have invited the surveillance state into our living rooms, and we paid for the privilege.

There is a concept in philosophy called the Panopticon. It is a prison design where the prisoners cannot see the guards, but the guards can see the prisoners. Because the prisoners never know when they are being watched, they effectively police themselves.

Our phones are the Panopticon.

The Digital ID Dilemma

This gets deeper when we look at where the government and big tech are heading.

We are inching closer to a mandatory Digital ID. The logic is sound on paper. It is efficient. It prevents fraud. It streamlines travel.

But let’s ask the systems engineering question that nobody seems to be answering.

If my ID lives on my smartphone, does the smartphone become mandatory for existence?

Right now, a phone is a tool. I can choose to leave it at home in my purse. I can choose to turn it off. But if my driver’s license, my medical records, and my bank access are all hard-coded into the device, it is no longer a tool. It is a digital limb.

This creates a terrifying precedent.

If a smartphone is mandatory for citizenship, who pays for it?

Does the government provide a latest-generation iPhone to every citizen? Or do we enter a "pay-to-exist" model, where you must pay a monthly subscription to Apple or Google just to prove you are who you say you are?

What happens to the person who cannot afford the data plan? Do they cease to exist in the eyes of the state?

The Luxury of Disconnection

I used to think that being "connected" was the ultimate status symbol.

I was wrong.

The ultimate status symbol is the ability to disconnect.

Privacy is becoming the rarest luxury asset in the world. The ability to walk down the street without being facial-scanned, tracked by GPS, and audio-mined for advertising data is the new "flying private."

This is why I find myself browsing eBay for vintage pink flip phones.

There is something romantic, almost rebellious, about a device that does one thing. It makes calls. It sends clumsy text messages. It does not know my heart rate. It does not know what I want to buy. It does not listen to my arguments.

A Challenge to the System

I am not saying we should all go live in a cave. I am a realist. I run a tech company. And let's be honest, I love ordering matcha on an app as much as anyone else.

But we need to start asking better questions. We need to demand that our technology serves us, rather than farming us.

We need to be able to say "No" to the smart toaster. We need to be able to opt out of the data harvest.

Until then, I am going to practice the art of leaving the phone in the other room. I am going to have conversations that are not recorded. I am going to walk outside and look at the sky, not the screen.

And if you see me in a year, and I am snapping a rhinestone-encrusted plastic phone shut with a dramatic click, do not laugh.

Just know that I am enjoying the silence.