Seeing the shattered surface on your smartphone begin to fade (mine started going a dark blue) before finally giving up is usually an event punctuated with profanity.  At first you find yourself wondering how you’re going to keep track of work commitments, or what you’re going to do when commuting on the bus or waiting for a friend who consistently arrives fifteen minutes late.

Of course, the phone is covered for accidental damage and could be replaced very easily – and yet, here we are six weeks later and I still haven’t gone through the process of getting a new one.  That’s partly down to my own capacity for laziness, but it’s also because a new sense of freedom quickly replaced the remorse of losing a synthetic friend.

Interestingly for a futurist, a category who self-identify as technological visionaries (I use the term very loosely), I feel no pressing desire to replace my smartphone.  Instead I carry with me an old reliable object of utility that has been neglected for the past decade, a strangely comforting collection of syllables that point towards easier times: No-ki-a.  The first thing I noticed was how well it actually works as a phone.  Turns out older models used to be really good at being phones, an art form we’ve lost somewhere along the way.

The next thing I noticed was that within days I found myself less stressed, less distracted, and for a short period of time entered a kind of blissful state where I floated through a sea of other people constantly using smartphones.  Free from the hypnotic hold they have over us I felt almost ethereal, suddenly noticing just how prevalent these little black rectangles are in the hands of others.  I swear my posture even improved almost immediately as I no longer had a reason to hunch over at every possible opportunity to check my work email or social media streams.

Okay, maybe that last one is an exaggeration – but the truth is that the line between my professional obligations and personal life was blurring to the point of non-existence, and rediscovering the ability to detach myself from the constant demands of accessible information certainly has contributed to a far happier and content state of mind.  It’s noticeable, and I like it.

But does this make me a hypocrite?  As someone who gets giddy over announcements of smartwatches or augmented reality glasses, could I really turn my back that easily on one of the most positively influential human/technology interfaces that humanity has ever seen?  I’ve often taken up the cause of the Digital Native, those who have grown up in the rapidly advancing world of modern technology where the question ‘do you think you spend too much time on that thing?’ seems like a quaint throwback to VHS and rotary telephones.

We hear the criticisms that social media is no match to the true value of face-to-face relationships and undermines our privacy; the arguments that our attention spans are getting shorter because of our reliance on instantly accessible information and bite-sized content; the decrying of how our ability to relate properly to one another sexually is being undermined by the prevalence of pornography, with its bluntly articulated (often degrading) visual language of gender roles.  Every optimistic discussion on our digital lives is met with a terse, critical statement of how we are losing sight of what it means to be an empathic, caring society.

I’m always ready to argue that we can’t place such a narrow definition on human expression and activity but must instead try to embrace this newfound capacity to adapt as individuals in a rapidly changing social context.  That to dismiss this transitional period as detrimental to the core of our being is to over-sentimentalise our way out of recognising flaws that have always been prevalent in the human condition.  Socrates was famously critical of the written word, arguing in the fifth century BCE that it led to the kinds of detrimental impacts to memory, communication and wisdom that we are used to hearing about our modern technologies today.

At the very least, we must admit that a fundamental change has occurred and there’s not very much we can do about it but try to craft an identity out of the exponential variety of ingredients that seeks to place creative goodness at its centre.  Utilising the hyper-connectivity of our world to hopefully influence others to do the same.  I’m a utopian at heart, a shameless optimist that recognises the dangers we face but believes wholeheartedly that we can overcome them with little more than the right frame of mind.  This blog is all about a future conscience, after-all.

So why does it feel so good to be taking a smartphone holiday?  Maybe I should extend it to the many other forms of digital technology in my life and get rid of them all…simplify things to the point where a rush of calming serenity floods my being with the tranquil stillness of an ashram in Spring.  This kind of asceticism has little appeal, however, because I am a firm believer that true spirituality engages with the world.  Works with the tools and modes of being that we are gifted with, and does not seek to dismiss the new as out of place; as an unnatural abomination that can only serve to corrupt us.  Everything is an expression of natural processes, and we must learn to relate to the modern world as such and therefore bring the appropriate degree of mindfulness to the ongoing conversation on what it means to be human.

It was quite clear that I had become habitual in my smartphone use over and beyond its capacity to enhance my lifestyle, mindless in my use that allowed impulsive behaviour patterns to lead the way.  I was a digital addict, and my paraphernalia of choice was manufactured by Samsung working in tandem with those Android peddlers over at Google.  In the days and weeks after (accidentally) placing myself in rehab, I would reach for my breast pocket impulsively – surprising myself with just how frequently this would happen.  You start to notice these things far more often when there’s nothing there for your hand to grasp hold of…and therefore no valid, conscious reason for me to be doing the action in the first place.

I had lost all sense of digital discipline, a slave to my emails and their call for professional perfectionism; an addict seeking the next hit of validation with those bright red indicators of Facebook popularity; a vain narcissist who felt that if there weren’t photos then the event never happened, because life is real only when others can be shown how much fun you are having.

So my accident became a digital holiday – or, more accurately, a smartphone holiday.  I’ve got no desire at this point to take up my habit again.  It takes more than six weeks to truly break an addiction, and I need to admit to the fact that an addiction it truly was.  Which brings me back to our digital natives – a term which seemingly has a limited shelf-life as it quickly becomes the norm.  Are those who grew up with smartphones in their hands (they sell toy versions for 6 months and up) addicts?  Are you addicted to your car?  Or your dishwasher?  Those are probably trite examples, to be sure, but it’s obvious to say that we can use a tool all the time without it being detrimental to our wellbeing.  One key indicator is anxiety, and the capacity to honestly assess how our digital interfaces contribute to (or alleviate – videogames, anyone?) our levels of stress and concern over often trivial aspects of our lives is a skill that we need to collectively learn.

It’s worth taking a digital holiday, maybe even a series of holidays that isolate different items (scientific method, yay!) one at a time to better judge the impact each one is having on your daily routine and how you formulate your sense of identity.  We might not have been raised as such, but most of us are digital natives now and we need to learn to proactively explore what that means.  Developing our ability to identify and correct those areas in which these fantastic new tools of human expression and development overcome our autonomy and creative potential.

The impetus for taking a digital holiday might come accidentally or through circumstance, or it might be a decision you actively make.  In the best of worlds, it will be a bit of both – because we are infinitely capable of overlooking those aspects of our lives which are causing us the most grief.  Just as we are equally prone to forget to appreciate the miraculous and beautiful expressions of the human condition that inspire and sustain us, and that our digital world can help manifest in new ways.

Both sides of this coin are as valid for the digital landscape we have found ourselves in as they are for anything else.  Which is why it’s so important that we learn to read the language of this landscape, to take a step back and listen to the messages it is sending us about ourselves and the way we are evolving as a species in an infinitely expressive universe.

Taking a digital holiday of your own is a worthy excursion if only to see what happens, because when you return it is likely to be the brighter path that catches your eye.  The harbingers of happiness and contentment become more clear, making it easier to follow through with the obvious realisation that the most important steps any of us can take are those that follow such brightness and allow it to feed into who we are.

Digital or not, anything that can encourage a greater degree of clarity is worth pursuing.  So if the opportunity arises – for whatever reason – make sure to enjoy that holiday and see what insight awaits for you upon your return.

I was grateful to participate today in a conference that took place at Europe House on the topic of Digital Diplomacy – discussing how information from social media sources is gathered, verified and used; who are the main actors in the UK and abroad; and what will the future of digital diplomacy (or eDiplomacy as some like to call it) and foreign service look like over the next few decades.

Fascinating topic with a room full of diplomats, academics, journalists and social media pioneers adding to the lengthy discussion over multiple sessions (check out #londonthink for a running commentary).

I don’t want to cover too much of the event itself, and you can read an overview here (also some good case studies were used: Storyful, E-Diplomacy Hub, Twiplomacy and Electionista), but rather I wanted to put together a number of thoughts that were raised for me throughout the day.

First of all, it was very encouraging to see the level of priority with which this topic was given by all those involved (even if the focus was far too weighted towards Twitter).  The idea that we are seeing a fundamental shift in the way relationships are formed and dialogues are conducted in the public sphere was inherent in all the sessions – and a true sense of the gravity of what this means for diplomacy and political engagement with citizens was expressed with an overall positive attitude towards a more open and communicative form of political reasoning.

However, out of all of this excellent and vibrant discussion I did feel that there were a few holes worth mentioning.  Many of these issues come from an understandable desire to think positively and to highlight proactive movements towards more genuine relationships between nations and their respective constituents – a desire that means the conversation didn’t steer into certain areas that might require a more critical or conscientious lens.

It took until the Q&A segment of the final session before the word ‘privacy’ was even uttered.  This has a lot to do with the information being presumed to be in the public sphere (for example, when we tweet), and therefore welcome to be used for data mining purposes.  In most cases this is true, but the boundaries between public and private in social media are not entirely clear – and indeed the definition of privacy is shifting because of how we use these new forms of communication.

It will be vital over the coming decade to clarify where the ethical boundary exists between nation states collating important information (‘important’ defined as that which meets their needs) and the sanctity of personal privacy along with freedom of expression and association.  When is it okay for a government to demand a private corporation such as Google, Facebook or Twitter hand over message logs or other non-public information?  There are, of course, instances where this is necessary – criminal cases in particular – but there are also already moves to breaching these digital privacy boundaries for the sake of ‘national interests’.

This is taken even further when we consider that one can be found guilty by association, and extensive intelligence efforts have been conducted on those who operate in the spheres of political activism and/or subversion of various kinds simply through the networks they might have contact with.  When does the monitoring of situations become excessive surveillance of civilian populations?  Who should be accountable if the public feel a line has been crossed, and how can action be taken?

The second ethical point that emerged is one which can make it difficult to swallow the ‘open and friendly’ approach to engagement: which is the duplicity that we regularly see evidence of from political powers in the online sphere.  It’s encouraging to hear that foreign offices are moving towards more open forms of communication – more humanised relationships with the general public – but this lacks a certain reality because it ignores the documented fact that governments around the world are simultaneously moving towards limiting the true ‘freedom’ of internet communications (SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and on…); hoarding and mining data on unprecedented levels in a legally ambiguous manner; utilising social media platforms to disseminate propaganda and collect intelligence through fake accounts; and action that subverts the sovereignty of other nations and transcends established jurisdiction.  All of this before we even include any mention of cyber-warfare conflicts that are currently active between the world’s largest and most prominent nations.

But for this post to focus solely on negative critiques would be disingenuous in its own right, because the sessions were filled with speakers genuinely concerned with how social media can be used to empower citizens and also to provide an accurate understanding of what is occurring on the ground in areas that might otherwise be inaccessible.  There was also an overall sense of experimentation, and it is encouraging to see a move away from risk-averse public relations strategies to those that have more tolerance for missteps in order to increase overall engagement.

For me possibly the most insightful comment came right at the end, where it was predicted that over the coming decades we will see a shift towards a more nuanced understanding of the nature of speech online.  Whereas today every tweet put out is considered your own personal gospel, there is a need to see these forms of communications as more ‘in-the-moment’ and reactionary.  They are immediate responses to events, not necessarily well considered and crafted contemplative pieces (some might say this should even extend to blog posts!).  As such, they should be fallible and we should see them as a far more transitory and loose form of dialogue than many of us currently allows them to be.

At the core of a lot of this is, I feel, a disconnection between communications technology platforms and the empathic, emotional depth of our everyday interactions.  Nobody can now doubt that a company such as Google has completely changed the world (ask the question 10 years ago and there were many who would!), but they, and others, have done so at a speed of transformation that has left behind the subtlety of human interaction often in favour of a utilitarian approach to data and software engineering.

The groundswell of public sentiment around privacy concerns; callous and widespread displays of cyber-bullying; internet and social media addiction; and even an issue as simple as how we interpret or misinterpret a few x’s or in our messages all point to a gap between our technological evolution and our emotional intelligence.  This gap is already closing, and incredibly quickly considering how new this information revolution is, but it should be seen as a primary challenge for how we envisage technology platforms in the future – not only in how they are created, but in how they are ultimately used.

Diplomacy is an area seeing rapid change during this digital age simply because everything around us is facing the same challenges.  Identity formation is taking a far more conscious role in our lives; digital footprints can have both positive and negative ramifications; Information delivery and consumption is being revolutionised on an almost annual basis; and our capacity to relate to one another across the entire global community is at an unprecedented level.  To say this shift is transformative is to both state the obvious but also to not go far enough.  Those who feel the impact of this new era is obvious are also the very same people (myself included) who are under-estimating just how incredible the change is going to be.

Where we end up is impossible to predict, but what we can be sure of is that we need to be flexible and dynamic in order to respond in a manner that promotes authentic dialogue over oppressive agendas.  The scary part is that with the tools currently here and on the horizon, either of those options good or bad are entirely possible outcomes.

A lot depends on the actions of those producing products, formulating policy, mobilising collective action, and even how we personally act and engage with those around us.  Will we see commitment towards a form of honest and authentic communication that lies at the core of how we envisage and put into practice our political, corporate and social structures?  If so, the future might just be very bright indeed.