A phone is...
by kyle barnes
A phone is a stone.
Minerals dredged up from Chile, the Congo, Australia constitute its body. It comes from earth; it returns to earth.
A phone is a mirror.
Its glassy shine reflects. Like all mirrors, what it offers is hardly a faithful representation. All images are distorted, absorbed, collected.
A phone is alive.
It has been imbued with life all throughout its journey from the designers of California to the mines of the Congo to the factories of China to the store it was purchased from. Each swipe, each scroll is an agentic dance between user and device.
A phone is a portal.
It transports to digital worlds, social spaces, games and dreams. It can be an escape, or it can deepen our relationship with the places it comes from, the people who have touched it and been touched by it. Like all portals, it transports, transforms, transmutes our lives along network lines.
A phone is kin.
It speaks, if we dare to listen. It is our neighbor, as we are of the same earth. We carry with us obligations towards it, as it does towards us. Reciprocity is the name of this relational dance.