We know too much

By Park Moo-jong

How is it going? Are you doing well? How about your New Year's resolutions, if you have any?

Four days have passed since the start of the "Year of the Pig" (that actually begins just a month later on Feb. 5 in the lunar calendar). People around me, also around you maybe, are used to asking these questions.

I have only one resolution: "fighting" my smartphone, a computer in my hand, in order to not know too much.

Most people must know that the Earth revolves around the sun. This is common knowledge. But what do we profit from this knowledge? There would be little inconvenience for us to live without knowing it.

It is impossible for us to completely ignore any information we do not necessarily need to live, in this era of IT (information technology).

All the information of today led to the smartphone. The late Steve Jobs (1955-2011) introduced it 12 years ago under the brand name of iPhone to help change the daily lives of mankind from then on.

The convenience of having a computer in our hand has radically changed the way we interact with the world. Yet, the problem is that we know "too much" about what's going on across the planet. Like the saying goes: "Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), a British philosopher and Nobel laureate, shared a lesson in his 1949 book "Authority and the Individual" by saying, "We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs."

What about the situation in the year of 2019, 70 years after he said so?

We spend too much time with our fingers on the screen to know too much, even if our brain has a limited memory. In other words, learning something from the gadget, necessary or not, costs too much time.

There are too many "Mr. Know-it-alls" around us these days thanks to Jobs' incredible job. To make a silly quip, one dares to say, "I know everything except for what I don't know." From political issues to gossip involving celebrities, namely from A to Z, people of today boast of their knowledge in the flood of news and information, either real or fake.

Most people pass the buck to their smartphone, though they admit without a pause to their addiction to the tool they bring to the bathroom every morning instead of broadsheet newspapers.

From bed to bed every day, the device of science is always with us, most of whom, otherwise, fall victim to nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia) that describes the sense of fear or worry that arises when someone is without their mobile phone or unable to use it.

What a coincidence!

Cambridge Dictionary has declared nomophobia the "Word of the Year for 2018," explaining that "it can strike when the battery dies while you're out and about and unable to recharge it ... It could also be felt when you can't find your handset, if it's slipped between couch cushions or fallen under your bed, or worse, if you've left it in the back of a taxi."

Oxford Dictionary chose "toxic" as the word of 2018. I'd like to interpret that the addiction to smartphones is toxic ... poisonous.

Fortunately, we're getting wise to the harmful effects of the gadget of late. But what's the solution? How do we distance ourselves from them or refrain from overuse?

A subway ride shows almost everything of the ill effects of the computer in our hand, defined as a "dependence syndrome" as the World Health Organization termed it.

Here, there and everywhere on the train, we can see young people using their phones with earphones with their heads down, in order to know too much about what's going on in this world, especially in this part of the globe.

I used to joke that less than 20 years from now, spinal surgeons and ENT doctors will be meeting their best days, while hearing aid makers will be enjoying flourishing business.

Knowing too much unnecessary information, we are increasingly losing our memories because the mobile phone does the function for us. We are losing chances to talk with our children at home after work. We are missing conversation as even at the dining table, every family member is so busy fingering his or her phone.

There must be a long way to go in fighting the overuse of smartphones. On my own part, I will not place my cell phone on the dining table and I will use an alarm clock instead of it, without taking it to the bed.

People's efforts to surf the internet and use social media less cannot be overemphasized for the crusade to free ourselves of the digital device. Yet, the government should also roll up its sleeves to work out measures to help fight phone overuse effectively.

No smoking zones are ever-expanding against the deadly habit of lighting up. Now is the very time for the government to designate more no mobile phone zones at public locations, not to mention subway trains, buses, elevators, concert halls and movie houses.

As I insist, one good way to free ourselves from the machine may be to encourage restaurants to offer discounts to customers who leave their phones with the receptionist like their coats in the cloak room.

We may also make it a rule that anyone who uses his or her cell phone while dining with friends or other people shall take the bill.

Some may want to know why knowing too much is not good. What's crystal clear is the fact that we waste too much time learning what we need not know.

Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.