I guess phones make it hard to see

… that Vegas scrolls into everything, when it should've been Rome.

Without looking at your phone, do you know how many apps you have on your phone screen right now?

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Hi, everyone-

I knew there’s something about scrolling on my phone that made it hard to see. And now I think I know what it is. 

It resembles a Las Vegas casino’s coin operated slot-machine.

Which might explain the blurry sensation I have whenever looking at my phone for too long, especially in the evenings. It feels like Vegas invaded my bed, when what I needed was Rome. I don’t think I expected this when Apple first introduced the one-finger scroll technology. 

I don’t think Charles Fey—the Bavarian youngest child of fourteen siblings—ever imagined this would happen either, when he first invented the precursor to slot machines in the old American west of 1894. 

Slot machines of today, generations after Fey’s invention, seem to give players highest likelihood of wins against the house edge of 5%. That is until you take a closer look at the real math. [Data: California Business Journal]

Charles, born Augustinus Josephys Fey, was poor. His father made 300 Gulden per year (about $146 US dollar) as a schoolmaster. He had to also work as a meat inspector, clerk, and cathedral sexton in order to feed everyone. And so Charles would watch his father move from one job to another like it was expected. All the while there was a railroad that brought trains into and out of his small town. This made an impact on Charles.

It somehow made his small town, seemed bigger. And his situation smaller.

When Charles later worked at a farm tool factory, he saw something interesting: things go a lot faster when mechanized. It was no surprise then, when he was just fifteen, he left Bavaria for a manufacturer in France. Not long after: London. Then: New Jersey, America. And later: California. He was only 23 then. I’d say that this was a pretty well-traveled young man even by today’s standards. 

In California, he met Marie and decided she was the one. He wanted to marry her. But tuberculosis pushed him towards the warmer climate of Mexico. He tried a lot of things. He tried various ventures, before finally having enough to marry Marie and to have children of his own.

But he didn’t stop there.

He tried inventing machines. Some worked, some didn’t. 

He tried everything, until he created the “Liberty Bell slot machine.’

It’s a three-reel countertop machine with a lever on the right side. And this was the one everyone wanted. Even a bar robber who destroyed everything, decided to leave with only the Liberty Bell slot machine and the bartender’s apron.

Modern technology never claimed that slot machines were the inspiration for all the scrolling.

But casinos in Las Vegas, like Caesar’s Palace, aren’t shy about it. 

The first time I ever set foot in Las Vegas—I felt like maybe they weren’t shy about anything at all.

Having grown up halfway around the world, I’ve heard of Vegas. I’ve seen it in movies. But I never really thought of it as the motivation for going to America. I was quiet and awkward as a kid. Still am now. And the thought of being surrounded by all the bombastic flexing of gold, power, and rock—wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

So when I was sent there for a meeting for work, I was already side-eyeing the whole thing. Worse, my prejudice against Vegas was confirmed when I arrived there for my meeting. First off—everything was made to look bigger, when they’re really not. There were so many decorative walls, doors, walkways and even skylights that don’t serve any real structural purpose. I get if sometimes this is necessary. But an entire courtyard of it seemed a stretch.

And every block I walked, it was like passing by a low-value buffet of conflicting colors and a cacophony of sounds. My feet hurt, and my shoes started to feel the weight of the cacophony. So I just took them off—and walked barefoot across the wall-to-wall granite floors that were glossy for a reason. Probably to mask all the human excrement of every kind.

I felt dirty. 

No one noticed that I was shoeless. 

• There was a girl in a bikini with a parrot on her shoulder.

• There was a man in his boxer briefs walking in his socks—but with a full suit up top.

• There was an old woman with thick glasses at a slot machine with a big white cup full of coins. No, popcorn. No, both popcorn and coins in the white bucket. Almost downing coins with every other handful. Where she sat were groups of other slot machines. I noticed something strange: the smell of cigarette was strongest there. 

I suppose an elderly swallowing money, a half-suited businessman, and a parrot bikini-girl would make my bare feet pretty boring. No one even bat an eyelash when I arrived at my meeting trying to explain them. They just went on talking. 

But as they were talking to me, I noticed something else: The speed at which they switched from one subject to another with lack of interest, just reminded me of those cigarette-fumed slot machines that the old lady was trying to conquer with her coins and popcorn. 

And suddenly, I felt very much like a tacky red cherry in a slot-machine reel: ornamental, pointless, and shiny only when it’s blurry.

All I could think of then—as I blankly stared at their mouths uttering words now inaudible to my ears—was:

… how my mother and father sent me to America against their will in the hopes that I become a better builder of things with meaning.

Not a staged red on a caged reel.

Miller’s Law (which says that the brain can only hold up to seven to nine memories each time) had a point. Scrolling choices beyond this amount is not only unrealistic, it’s bending to reel-centric rules not meant for average humans. [Data: Harvard University]

If Charles Fey came to America and invented the slot machine because he felt that the mechanics of a reel would take him out of poverty, that same reel did the complete opposite for me:

It gutted my insides and took everything of meaning.

My mother and father needed me to be a part of building a ‘Rome.’ And I knew I didn’t want to do it in a day. It doesn’t matter that it’s just an analogy for creating something, anything, of substance—whether it’s a civilization or thoughts that matter. 

What matters was that scrolling had made it hard to see. 

When I’m scrolling through my phone and a friend comes into the room, they’d usually ask, “What are you doing?” And it’d be hard to give an answer. It’d go something like this:

Friend: What are you up to?

Thalia: Oh, just scrolling around.

Friend: Oh, yeah? What did you find?

Thalia: Nothing really. 

If the answer to questions like this is ‘nothing really,’—and in the meantime the world literally is at the fingertip—maybe the problem lies in the seeing. And the scrolling. What’s more, is that:

1. It had made it hard: for those people in the meeting to see me as more than something on a cherry-picking reel of passable options.

2. It had made it hard for me to see: that the old lady with coins and popcorn, wasn’t just daring for the world to end by eating federally minted metal. She was looking for a new federation worthy of her heart’s minting. 

3. It made it hard to see: that the half-suited businessman wasn’t just some unzipped loser who had a one-night stand because he didn’t care. No, he was both un-attired yet never fully retired—undressed yet willing to try the uniform again. 

And most of all, scrolling had made it hard to see—even if you came from the pit of poverty like Charles Fey—that mechanizing how we get what we want is only fun up to a certain point.

The point before … Charles Fey just had to ring Liberty Bells for unbeloved bar strangers, when the wedding bells to his beloved Marie would’ve been all she ever wanted.

The point before … we’d rob a bar slot machine and chef-apron in the hopes of coin-cooking up satisfaction only humans could’ve really given. And,

The point before … we’d build a copycat Caesar’s Palace instead of a better Roman-Egyptian Library of Alexandria—complete with paper scrolls containing all our richest thoughts.

The list of author-scholars who contributed to writing scrolls for the Library of Alexandria in Egypt (ca 285 BC), was dizzying. From Aristotle to Sophocles to a bunch of other names I cannot pronounce without profusely salivating. [Data: The American Historical Review] 31.2001° N, 29.9187° E

I’m no product designer. But if I were in a boardroom meeting where brainy folks are designing phones, I’d simply ask some questions:

• How hard is it to create a toggle option in phone settings—where anyone can have autonomy over switching from Scrolling, back to Dialing? Including the minority few who just want clearer thoughts, singular purpose, and deeper use.

• Instead of a home screen with twenty unmemorable apps, what about just one search bar for whatever the user feels necessary at that specific moment? And,

• How hard is it to ask more of these questions that have never been asked—not because they shouldn’t be asked, but because things move so fast that no one has even thought of asking them?

I want to create scrolls in a new Library of Alexandria. If it’ll get burned down and scrolled past by the Caesars of today …

I’m OK with it. 

At the very least, it won’t make it hard to see. 

-Thalia

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PS:

If you enjoyed what you’re reading, consider becoming a free, or preferably paid subscriber. Rome never was built in a day. And even then, there were flaws. So I need your help. First to keep this newsletter going. But most importantly to thoughtfully talk about things that everyone ignores. Like how scrolling has made it hard to see.

Thanks for contributing.

Here’s to building a new ‘Library of Alexandria’ together.

-Thalia