“A decade or so into the ubiquity of smartphones, our writing about them has yet to mature”

A decade or so into the ubiquity of smartphones, our writing about them has yet to mature. We generate staggering amounts of text about their features and release dates, but not enough imagination has been applied to the more crucial thing: the way they’ve become characters in our daily lives, permanent little sprites that occupy the crevices of our clothing and time and minds. Are they more like tapeworms, hermit crabs or the birds said to clean hippos’ teeth? How do we describe the daily things they do — their high jinks and interruptions and chivalrous gestures, the way they move our minds around?

Sam Anderson, “New Sentences”, The New York Times Magazine (19 March 2017), 13.