Not Buying It

Call me Odysseus, ‘cause I’m a man of many devices. Over the last few years especially, I have been accruing a collection  of tablets, readers, gaming handhelds—all sorts of things, altogether too many. In the room where I’m sitting, I currently have:

• an iPhone
• an Apple Watch
• an iPad
• a Mac Mini
• a Remarkable 2
• a BOOX Tab Mini
• a Steam Deck
• a Kindle
• a bunch more older things in a box under my bed.

Next door I have a gaming PC, a PS4 and a bunch of older consoles plugged into a smart TV. In my office I have a Macbook Air and an old iPhone I use to watch stuff on in the gym because I’ve been trying not to carry my phone about.

You get the point. It’s a lot of things. I’ve had reasons for buying all of these, and some of them I’ve had for ages, but now I’ve hit this point I’ve been forced to admit it’s basically unnecessary. Each one is meant to solves a problem—and some of them do, in a way, but ultimately not really. It’s possible that this is what maturing looks like, but despite wanting one I am not going to spend too much money on the latest exciting device that promises to solve all the problems of how I relate to computers.

The Daylight DC-1 looks really nice and basically exactly what I would’ve described if you’d asked me what my idea device was. It has a display that isn’t actually e-ink but has many of the best properties of e-ink but with an actually-good refresh rate, nice amber backlight etc. For me it would sit somewhere between the BOOX Onyx, the Remarkable and the iPad. It would do a whole bunch of things I would really like.

But here’s the thing: while it would be absolutely smashing to have a tablet that’s “less distracting”, I have come to realise that the fundamental problem I have is not a lack of devices. Equally, it's not that I’m surrounded by devices—or at least, not just that I’m surrounded by devices. My problem is that I’m me, and have a condition that causes me to fall down holes of stimulation- and novelty-seeking even when it’s to my detriment, and this applies not just to my behaviour but to my meta-behaviour; to the way I think about how I relate to my devices. I can sit there imagining how cool and different life would be if I had one, how it'd make me the person I really am, the one I want to be, the one who can just resolve to sit down and read rather than having their brain roll a dice beforehand to determine whether that ability will be granted to me.

The DC-1 might be the best thing in the world, but it would not be able to solve the true problem I have, which is the true problem that pretty much everyone has: wherever you go, there you are. My brain keeps coming back to it over and over again—I’m writing this at least in part to exorcise this desire for now, though at the time of writing the ability to pre-order and get it this year has now gone. I may well, one day, buy one. At some point I may feel the threshold has been passed. But it's not today! Today, I can instead do the slow, tedious work of helping myself cope better with my boredom, and then just suck it up and use the devices I have which do all the things I'm after anyway.