In so short a time, about a decade really, smartphones have crashed into human society with such a colossus impact that it should split the planet in two. It seems the entire world, every single one of us, is likely to at least come in contact with one and only by deliberate choice, opt not to desire one with all their heart, soul and mind. It’s as if we have chosen an allegiance to this seemingly all-powerful, all-knowing, pocket-sized beast. (No, it’s not a Pokemon, though Professor Oak’s pokedex holds an erie similarity and came out about a decade before the iPhone.)

While I have been discussing the dangers of smartphone use, particularly with regard to the failed ability of the average person to say “No!” to it’s siren cry for attention, it was not until I was reading through an excerpt of Adam Greenfield’s Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, titled A Sociology of the Smartphone, that my eyes were opened to the true breadth and depth into humanity that this alluring little device reached, and in not so beneficial ways. Yes, we always knew everything was made in China, but the hypnotic glow of the object of our worship had blinded us to the sinister fact that every tiny bit of its physical presence was assembled by someone who could never afford one, even though it certainly provided a job. Even the elements of its battery were harvested in some of the most inhumane environments.

Greenfield walks us through the inner-workings of these devices and of all its marvelous technological wonders, including the very concept that this actually is a phone with which you could speak to anyone in the world through, he settles on the most amazing and most invasive of features: GPS mapping. The trillions of dollars are required to enable this profound function. Cables, satellites, radios, so much and yet it is unbelievably reliable. Perfected of a few short years, I recall being both thrilled and frustrated by VZNavigator, on my pre-smartphone cell phone. It had a non-touch screen but could give pretty accurate directions while showing you where you were currently along those directions. But if you lost connection while driving (this is still the case but the apps and systems are so much more reliable now) you might miss your turn or take the wrong one. We all know how that goes, and we drive twice as fast to go back to where we last knew where we were.

As Americans, we value what our forefathers considered to be an unalienable right; that is Liberty. Inherent in this Liberty is freedom of movement, association and thought.

Yet it appears that in the use of these devices, established and made practical, we practitioners of these smartphones are relinquishing our otherwise unalienable right by the subjugation of ourselves to the harvesters of all this information collected in the transmittal of so much information about ourselves. Loki, in The Avengers movie from a few years ago, desiring to be ruler of the Earth, or something, (he had daddy issues as only a Norse god could) spoke to a large group of people in Berlin that he had just trapped and forced to kneel before him. Loki said, “Is this not your natural state? It is the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end you will always kneel.”

Loki said, “Is this not your natural state? It is the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end you will always kneel.”

Rather than resign ourselves to a slave-like status, our minds at the mercy of those who feed us what we should think. see and feel through an elaborate maze of algorithms for some ulterior motive that slyly finagles us into a shallow life, we can resist by employing a few strategies designed to alleviate the stress of our cognitive limitations. Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, in their article, Remedies for a Distracted Mind, offer us to experience freedom, the type early settlers and patriots experienced, through improving our surroundings and our place in those surroundings. Eliminate all distractions until you have only what you need for the given effort. Set your environment for yourself by abolishing everything from your lunch to your phone to additional monitors available for work. Put an out-of-office sign up. Provide hours or days for which you would like to disengage and let people know you are not engaging for a while. Finally, cut out all the crap that keeps creeping in there.

The idea is not to cut everyone off but to successfully free yourself from the encroaching ruler that is your smartphone.