스마트폰과 알고리즘에 의한 피로감과 디지털 중독이 심화되면서, 사용자가 주도권을 되찾고자 하는 ‘슬로우 테크(slowtech)’ 트레즌드가 떠오르고 있습니다. 유선 이어폰, 레트로 카메라, 초기 아이팟 등 의도적으로 ‘불편함(마찰)’을 수용하는 기기들이 주목받으며, 과거를 창조했던 개발자들조차 현재의 스크린 중독 문제를 해결하기 위한 디톡스 앱 개발에 나서고 있습니다. 이는 일시적인 유행이 아니라 스마트폰으로부터 인간의 주의력을 보호하기 위한 중요한 소비 행태 변화로 평가됩니다.
번역된 본문
토니 파델(Tony Fadell)이 뉴욕 28번가 지하철역에 들어섰을 때, 자신이 20여 년 전에 직접 디자인했던 제품 광고와 마주치게 될 거라고는 예상하지 못했다. 하지만 그곳엔 “스크린 타임 제로(Zero screen time)”를 약속하며 지나가는 사람들을 유혹하는 1.5m 크기의 아이팟 셔플(iPod Shuffle) 포스터가 있었다. 아이팟의 아버지로 불리는 파델은 테크크런치(TechCrunch)와의 인터뷰에서 “처음엔 ‘잠깐, 누군가 광고를 바꾸지 않은 건가?’라고 생각했다”며 “그 물건을 속속들이 아는 나 같은 사람에게는 마치 내 아이의 사진을 보는 것과 같았다”고 말했다.
파델이 지하철역에 서 있을 때, 주변에는 스마트폰으로 음악을 스트리밍하기 위해 무선 블루투스 이어폰을 낀 사람들로 가득했다. 그들은 1억 곡이 넘는 음악 라이브러리에 아무런 제약 없이 접근할 수 있었다. 우리가 당연하게 여기는 이 기술은 스티브 잡스의 초기 아이팟 슬로건인 “주머니 속의 천 곡의 노래”를 매우 구식인 것처럼 들리게 만든다. 오늘날의 스트리밍 앱과 비교했을 때 셔플 재생에 크게 의존하고 제어 기능이 거의 없었던 우표만 한 크기의 아이팟 셔플은 현대의 대중에게 결코 매력적이지 않을 것이다.
하지만 우리는 기술에 너무 깊이 뿌리내린 나머지, 식료품 쇼핑부터 데이트까지 모든 경험을 다양한 기기, 앱, 알고리즘이 매개하고 있다. 우리는 거의 모든 것을 할 수 있는 스마트폰을 만들어냈지만, 동시에 풍요롭기보다는 소모적인 끊임없는 연결 상태를 만들어냈다. 리퍼비시(Refurbish, 재생산) 기술 온라인 마켓플레이스인 백 마켓(Back Market)의 최고 마케팅 책임자(CMO) 조이 하워드(Joy Howard)는 테크크런치에 “사람들은 매우 과포화되고 과도하게 자극을 받고 있으며, 자신이 사용하는 기술에 있어 훨씬 더 마음챙김(mindful)을 실천하는 접근 방식을 원한다”며 “우리는 삶의 모든 측면을 최적화해야 한다는 필요성에 지쳐있다”고 말했다.
파델을 그토록 놀라게 한 아이팟 셔플 광고는 하워드와 그녀의 팀이 진행한 것이다. 그러나 하워드는 이렇게 구식이 된 기술에 대한 수요가 증가하고 있다고 말한다. 만약 이 기기들이 매출을 견인하지 못했다면, 그녀의 회사가 붐비는 뉴욕 지하철역에 비싼 광고 자리를 내지 않았을 것이다. 소셜 미디어와 스마트폰이 없는 세상을 알지 못하는 젊은 세대에게 유선 이어폰, 레트로 게임기, CD, 디지털 컴팩트 카메라에는 특별한 마법이 숨어 있다. 그들은 그들의 주의력을 독점하려 하지 않는 경험을 갈망한다.
올드 스쿨 카메라는 사진을 인스타그램 스토리에 업로드할 수 없고, 레트로 게임기는 도박 광고로 스팸을 보내지 않으며, 아이팟은 알고리즘에 의해 당신이 좋아할 만한 음악을 자동으로 재생하지 않는다. 하워드가 이를 “슬로우 테크(slowtech)”라고 부르는 이 움직임의 핵심은 바로 이것이다. 하워드는 “지금까지의 ‘패스트 테크(Fast tech)’는 마찰을 제거하는 것이 전부였다면... [이제] 사람들은 마찰을 스스로 경계선을 만드는 방법으로 보고 있다”며 “이제 사람들이 삶에 마찰을 되돌아오게 하고 그것을 결함이 아닌 하나의 기능(feature)으로 여기길 원한다는 사실이 나에게는 너무나 놀랍다”고 말했다.
파델이 스티브 잡스에게 처음 아이팟을 제안했을 무렵, 오스틴 머레이(Austin Murray)는 초기 모바일 게임 회사 중 하나인 잼데이터(JAMDAT)를 설립했다. 이 회사는 빠르게 상장했으며 일렉트로닉 아츠(Electronic Arts)에 6억 8천만 달러에 매각되었다. 머레이는 테크크런치에 “2000년, 2001년에 우리 회사를 홍보했을 때 사람들은 우리를 비웃으며 ‘누가 휴대전화로 게임을 하겠어?’라고 말했다”고 회상했다.
이제 투자자들은 그가 자신이 만든 현상을 역전시키기 위해 개발 중인 스크린 타임 감소 앱인 ‘모카(MOQA)’를 제안할 때도 마찬가지로 의심의 눈초리를 보낸다. 머레이는 “내 아이들과 내 주변 사람들에게 일어나는 일을 지켜보는 것이 내 영혼을 가장 아프게 한다”며 “모든 사람이 하루 평균 약 5시간씩 스마트폰을 보는 등 똑같은 행동을 할 때, 이것은 단순한 의지력의 문제가 아니다. 이는 제품 디자인의 문제이다”라고 지적했다.
우리가 폰, 컴퓨터, TV를 사용하는 데 들이는 시간을 줄이려는 열망은 이제 어디서나 볼 수 있는 보편적인 현상이 되었다. 약 53%의 미국 성인이 자신의 스크린 타임을 줄이고 싶다고 말한다. 머레이는 “어느 순간 나는 시간을 낭비하지 않기에는 의지력만으로는 충분하지 않다는 것을 깨달았다”고 덧붙였다.
When Tony Fadell entered New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station, he did not expect to come face-to-face with an advertisement for a product he designed over twenty years ago. But there it was: a five-by-four-foot poster promoting the iPod Shuffle, luring passersby with the promise of “zero screen time.” “The first thing was, I thought, ‘Wait a second, did somebody not change the ad?’” Fadell, known as the father of the iPod, told TechCrunch. “For somebody like me who knows that thing intimately, it’s like seeing your kid’s picture.” As Fadell stood in the train station, he was surrounded by people wearing wireless Bluetooth headphones to stream music on their phones, effortlessly accessing music libraries with over 100 million songs. This technology that we take for granted makes Steve Jobs’ early iPod tagline – “one thousand songs in your pocket” – sound antiquated. The postage-stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which relied heavily on shuffle playback and offered little control compared to today’s streaming apps, should not appeal to a modern audience. But we have become so entrenched in technology that our various devices, apps, and algorithms mediate our every experience, from grocery shopping to dating. We’ve built smartphones that can do almost anything, but we’ve also created a constant connectedness that has become more exhausting than enriching. “People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they’re doing with their tech,” Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market , an online marketplace for refurbished tech, told TechCrunch. “There’s this fatigue that we have with the need to optimize every single aspect of our life.” Howard and her team were responsible for the iPod Shuffle ad that Fadell was so shocked to encounter. But Howard says that demand is growing for this supposedly obsolete tech – if these devices weren’t driving sales, the company wouldn’t have shelled out for a premium ad placement in a hectic New York City subway station. For younger generations who have never known a world without social media and smartphones, there’s a certain magic to wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, and digital point-and-shoot cameras. They crave experiences that aren't trying to monopolize their attention. Old school cameras can't upload photos to your Instagram story, retro games don't spam you with gambling ads, and iPods can't automatically play music that you're algorithmically destined to enjoy. That's the whole point of this movement, which Howard calls “slowtech.” “The ‘fast tech’ up until now has been all about eliminating friction… [Now], people are seeing friction as a way to create boundaries for themselves,” Howard said. “It’s so stunning to me that now people are wanting to bring friction back into their lives, and see that as a feature, rather than a flaw.” Around the same time that Fadell first pitched the iPod to Steve Jobs, Austin Murray founded JAMDAT, one of the first mobile gaming companies , which quickly went public and was sold to Electronic Arts for $680 million. “When we were pitching our company back in 2000, 2001, people were laughing at us, saying, ‘Why would anyone play games on their cell phone?’” Murray told TechCrunch. Now, investors are just as incredulous when he pitches them on his screen time reduction app , MOQA, which he is building to counteract the very phenomenon he helped create. “It’s watching what happened to my kids and the people around me that hurts my soul the most,” Murray said. “When everyone is doing the same thing – meaning everyone, the average screen time is like five hours probably on a phone every day – it’s not a willpower problem. It’s a product design problem.” This desire to cut back on the time we spend using our phones, computers, and TVs has become ubiquitous – about 53% of American adults say they want to reduce their screen time. “At a certain point, I realized that willpower was insufficient to not waste time on my phone,” said writer Calvin Kasulke , whose novel “Several People Are Typing” imagines workers trapped inside a Slack workspace. He now pays for Opal and Freedom , two apps designed to limit his screen time and social media use. “I don’t need to limit my time on iMessage – that’s people who I really know! But I certainly don’t want to be wasting my time doomscrolling.” “I want to be very clear… I don’t feel smug about this. It’s embarrassing to have two different apps to limit how I use this,” Kasulke said. “I don’t think screens are inherently bad. I just think the way I was using [my phone] was worse and dumb, and now it’s a little bit less dumb.” Others have given up their iPhones altogether, opting instead for flip phones, e-ink devices that run Android software, or minimalist touch-screen hardware like the Light Phone . “Our customers for the last ten years are telling us how they feel more free after switching to the Light Phone,” Light co-founder Kaiwei Tang told TechCrunch. “It’s getting more and more attention, especially among young people. We have quite a lot of the community using Light Phone as 20 to 35-year-olds, which surprised us.” Murray isn’t as optimistic about the future of “dumb phones,” though. “There’s certainly a movement of people who are just kind of anti-tech and ‘get it out of our lives,’” he said. “That’s really hard though, because then you realize you can’t do things that are now assuming you have a smartphone, like banking, or going into a hotel, or [using] credit cards.” Kasulke said if Apple ever made an e-ink iPhone, he would “f–ing donate plasma to be able to afford it." But that's unlikely, so he’s not particularly interested in downgrading his phone. “I’m not like a, ‘I wish I could throw this thing in the toilet and go live in the woods’ kind of guy,” Kasulke said. “My phone has some utility for my personal and professional life, but it also lives in your pocket, and it is very, very easy, and in fact, designed in some ways to be addictive and to mindlessly waste time on it.” Screen time isn’t universally bad. We’re accumulating screen time when we video chat with our family, text our friends, read news articles, maintain our Duolingo streaks, or play Wordle. But for as much as tech brings us closer to one another, it also yanks us out of the present moment. “It’s clear people want the convenience of digital, but they don’t want the annoyance of being always connected,” Fadell said. “I’ve always been like, ‘We need less screens, not more of them.’ So to have an Apple Watch with everything, like, no, no, no – I don’t want more, I want less.” It’s not surprising that Fadell’s preferences are a bellwether for the market – he’s a veteran product designer, after all. American spending on fitness trackers grew 88% year-over-year, according to market research firm Circana, which credits screenless wearables like the Oura ring and Whoop wristband as key sales drivers. Even though these devices don’t have screens, you have to use your smartphone to see your data, which would make it even harder for Oura and Whoop users to try out something like the Light Phone. But most consumers aren’t looking to make such an extreme change as pivoting to a flip phone – instead, some are embracing even more sophisticated hardware that relies on their smartphone, but cuts down their overall screen time. Mark, a $159 AI bookmark, advertises itself as a tool to help users stop pulling out their phone to take notes while they’re reading. While some readers might find the idea of an AI bookmark to be symptomatic of the same problem that pushes people toward a digital detox, Mark founder Eason Tang sees it differently. “The way we try to brand it now is this sort of analog tool, very culturally integrated with design, film, books, and literature,” Tang told TechCrunch. There’s something undoubtedly absurd about using an AI bookmark to mediate your relationship with your phone, yet there is a bit of truth to Ta