decentralizing the smartphone — part ii: pocket radio
In this series of posts, I’m revealing the method that helped me the most reduce my smartphone use: replacing it with other dedicated devices.
Radio takes this idea of decentralizing the smartphone even further because it replaces the certainty of streaming with the uncertainty of whatever happens to be playing live.
With streaming, we choose everything. The algorithm learns what we like and keeps feeding us more of the same. Even with an iPod, which I discussed in the previous post, there’s still control—because we were the ones who put the music there.
Radio is different.
There is only what’s playing in that moment.
You can’t rewind, you can’t browse a list of what already played, and most importantly, your personal taste doesn’t decide what comes next. That makes music feel like an event—something that simply happens—rather than something permanently available, waiting for a click.
When I take music off my smartphone, I also remove the notifications, social media, and all the distractions that come with it.
Radio is simpler, and technically inferior in many ways, but it does exactly what it promises. And that simplicity reduces the anxiety that comes from having too many choices all the time. What initially feels like a loss of control eventually becomes a gain in attention.
The experience also becomes more collective, because other people are listening to the same thing at the same time—without metrics, without personalized recommendations.
Personally, I love the way radio static settles into the air, carrying the feeling of an older technology—one that exists independently of the internet.
P.S. Every day at 6:00 PM, Ave Maria by Johann Sebastian Bach plays on 104 FM Natal. Spectacular. One of the best pieces of music to hear at twilight.