UTOPIA Part 6 .. Smartphone Blindness

In one of those unfortunately unforeseen and cruel twists of human progress, an idea which seemed so good at the time - so full of promise - turned out to be not such a good thing after all.

Such was the case with the first generation of so-called 'smartphones', which were nowhere near as smart as the second generation. The second generation of smartphones were many times more intelligent than even the smartest people using them. The third generation was smarter still, but it was short lived as its release onto the market coincided with the Great Meltdown and the end of civilisation as it had been known.. so the third generation was the last.

These two events (the Great Meltdown and the release of the 3rd generation of smartphones) may or may not be related. It may have been the case that the Great Meltdown in fact saved humanity from complete domination by super intelligent machines. It could be argued that although 97% of all species as well as a similar percentage of the human population were all but wiped out, they were actually spared a fate much worse. Some things will never be known.

When smartphones were first introduced to the world by a man called Jobs, few people could have anticipated or predicted the countless ways they were going to transform human society, behaviour and consciousness.

Of course, some people were worried about microwave radiation or other undiscovered health risks, but for the most part people believed the experts who said that these ubiquitous devices were completely harmless and safe. All sorts of tests were carried out, of course, to be sure of their safety - however, even with the most sophisticated measuring and detecting apparatus of the time, as well as the most diabolically ingenious animal experiments which could be devised - nobody could have predicted the unstoppable degenerative condition which came to be known as 'Smartphone Blindness'.

The firsts cases of Smartphone Blindness began to appear about twenty years after the release of the first generation of smartphones. The debilitating headaches in the temples and behind the eyes, which were the first of the symptoms, were treated with a strong painkiller which was developed to alleviate this particular pain in the most targeted way. As an unforeseen side effect, the drug caused a complete loss of ambition, but at least it allowed people to continue using their devices.

In fact, if people had completely stopped using their phones at the onset of the first symptoms, there was a chance that the condition could be reversed, but that option was never seriously considered, either by medical experts or by smartphone manufacturers.

What the researchers had failed to take into account (because very little was known about it at the time) was the damaging, resonant effect of certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation on the nervous system.. particularly on the optic nerve and parts of the brain associated with sight.. after thousands of hours spent staring intently at a little screen, at very close range, radiating such frequencies directly into the eyes and brain.

After the headaches came the first stage of the blindness - the Rose Tint - a term which forever after took on menacing associations, due to it being a sure sign of the irreversible onset of Smartphone Blindness...

It was so called because everything took on a 'rose tint'. This may not sound so bad in itself, but it meant considerable loss of the colour green. What before would have appeared as lush green grass, leaves or plants became shades of grey. Even people who had previously had no appreciation for plants or the natural world suffered a great feeling of loss at no longer being able to see the colour green.

Next to go were the yellows, as the world took on a purple hue. Gone was the golden sunshine, the sun became a white spotlight in a purple sky.

After that, the blues disappeared and so the sky lost its colour, fading into a reddish grey background who's details were hard to decipher and who's contours played tricks on the imagination. Trees became mountains. Mountains became clouds. Clouds became trees. It bacame hard to differentiate.

When the red eventually gave way, all that was left of colour was a kind of indistinct, indescribable grey in various shapes and forms, lacking depth, vividness or clarity.

The final stage of this unstoppable, degenarative process was the 'Pixellation' in which all remaining details became approximated to the lowest of resolution. All peripharal vision was lost as well as any sense of distance. This gave the impression of watching the world on one of the earliest television sets.. the sort with a small curved glass screen, a grainy black and white image, full of interference and distortion.

By the time the link and the cause were identified, many millions of people had the condition. Subsequent models of 2nd generation smartphones had completely different screen technology (they were usually connected directly to the brain, to avoid damaging the sensitive optic nerves, among other reasons) and certain electromagnetic frequencies were banned in all devices due to their damaging resonant effects. Unfortunately it was too late for many first generation smartphone users who's world became permanently pixellated.