The wooden stairs in my childhood home had a creaky step. I can still vividly picture the way it groaned under pressure. It was such a loud, incriminating sound that I would usually hop over it on my midnight runs to the kitchen. Otherwise, I would wake the entire house.
It takes an incredibly intimate familiarity to develop that kind of habit. Once you really start knowing a place, you develop your own navigational idiosyncrasies like that. My roommate says he would always grab the railing in a particular way when walking upstairs in his childhood home.
I also see myself developing unique behaviors in the digital space. Only I have the motor memory to immediately open the notes app on my phone. A stranger would have to look for it, but my fingers subconsciously understand where to go. Much like with my childhood home, I have an embodied knowledge of my home screen.
That phrase—“home screen”—has been on my mind recently. The language of the smartphone invites you to think of it as a house. You can “choose your wallpaper,” just like with a real house; you can “lock” your phone like a front door. The metaphor is that this is a private refuge from the outside world. It is a tiny dwelling in your pocket, which you can customize like an actual dwelling to affirm your identity.1 In doing so, you “tame” the technology, making it feel natural in your everyday life.
The phone, like your house, is a focal point. Everything revolves around it. When you need comfort in the physical world, you go back to the home; in the digital world, you go back to your home screen. There is something calming about a deeply personal environment. It provides a grounding presence which we can retreat to.
A computer, meanwhile, remains more functional. Phrases like “desktop” and “taskbar” create a metaphor that this is a workstation; you have “trash” and “files.” Of course, there are still work-like aspects to the phone and home-like aspects to the computer, but the phone takes on a far more domestic role in our lives. It is not a utility: it is an extension of self.
In his book, The Poetics of Space, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard argues that our intimate spaces are deeply intertwined with our imagination and sense of being. When you curl up in a comfortable nook in your home, for example, your consciousness is gathered inward. You have control over this small space, in contrast to the wild, turbulent outdoors. You can focus attention differently in miniature.
As I move between apps on my phone, I notice a vague emotion that I am entering different rooms, each with its own character. The settings app is the basement; the dating apps are the bedroom. No matter where I go, though, there is that coziness of being in a nook. This is my corner of the world; I am free to do what I want. I can let my mind relax, for I am safe and secure from the vast, terrifying world.
Of course, phones only give us the illusion of privacy and control. If apps are rooms, then every room in your house has someone peeking through the blinds. And you might be able to customize your experience to some degree, but automatic updates are a reminder that you don’t really have agency over your cute little space.
The veneer of domesticity means we let our guard down, just like we do in our actual homes—and without defenses, we fall in love. I adore the squeaky step in my childhood home because it’s a sign that I belong to this place; this is a part of who I am. It’s impossible to avoid being enchanted by the small connections we have to spaces, meaning that we will always extend some topophilia to the digital domain.
And yet this love is a projection. The phone creates a sensation of intimacy without providing true intimacy. On a rational level, we know this; but our actual experience happens in an ambient scroll state. Now there’s a dissonance between feeling like your phone is a home and knowing that it’s not.
Metaphors and user interfaces shape reality. I don’t feel as much tension with my computer, because I implicitly understand it as a workspace. If we learn to regard our phones the same way, we can reclaim power over them. But that starts with how you’re framing your thoughts, so be clear with yourself: you are not domesticating your phone—it is trying to domesticate you.