(12 hours ago)
Walk down almost any street in America and you’ll find them: dull and darkened storefronts and homes that somehow seem as if they have always been abandoned. With an aura to them that almost feels frozen in time, It’s hard to imagine that these run-down husks ever contained any bustling life within their walls. But that’s exactly what makes abandoned properties so unique. Within our modern world, most businesses occupy their storefront in a rigid manner. Fast food restaurants are designed to be fast food restaurants. They have become interchangeable when one inevitably replaces another, simply putting up a new logo and hiring new staff will cover all traces of the old business. This one-size-fits all approach has crushed character out of our lives that used to care for more than the palatable minimum. Colorful and characterized McDonald’s interiors have disappeared in exchange for bleak gray walls, floors, and siding. This love of the mundane has ironically caused the abandoned buildings of our towns and cities to possess more character than any corporate ones ever did.An abandoned building can be a blank canvas for our imaginations. There is one home in my neighborhood that had been abandoned for several years. I vividly remember walking the sidewalk in front of it and seeing a tree that had sprouted from the chimney. The way the building felt set back in the unmaintained yard and removed from its highly populated surroundings was almost mysterious. Even though it housed nothing, its presence had a way greater effect on me than I can say about any other occupied home. When it got demolished and replaced by a generic modern home, the imaginative feel of the tree-chimney house was gone.Part of the fascination is that abandoned properties are one of the few places where time is allowed to move slowly. Everything else in our world is optimized, renovated, flipped, or updated: restaurants remodel every few years; apartment complexes repaint themselves before anyone notices the colors fading; stores rearrange their aisles on purpose to produce greater flow. It’s all about corralling humans to their next generation in a frictionless way. But abandoned edifices don’t participate in that; there is no profit to be made in gazing at buildings. They weather. They decay. They keep secrets.There’s also something unintentionally democratic about these spaces. A boarded-up storefront belongs to everyone and no one. Anyone walking by can project a new purpose onto it. A bakery. A thrift shop. A place for poetry readings. A tiny grocery store. A memory of what used to be, or a fantasy of what could soon replace it someday. Before a developer arrives with blueprints, the building exists in a suspended state where every resident casually invents an alternative potential use for it.But that suspended state rarely lasts. Eventually the blueprints do arrive, and with them comes the same pattern that has swept across towns everywhere: the erasure of anything boldly stylized in favor of whatever is easiest to rent and replicate and sell. Developers will claim they’re “revitalizing” a neighborhood, but revitalization has become little more than a euphemism for sanding down every rough edge until nothing original remains. Most modern developments have been led by the same mentality that would disguise commercial parking lots with fake grass and call them “plazas.” Worse still is that most buildings could just as easily exist in Phoenix or Portland or Pittsburgh.What strikes me is that the supposedly “modern” replacements never seem to match the emotional impact of what they replace. No one has ever stopped in front of a brand-new beige duplex and wondered, even for a moment, what stories sit behind its drywall. No one walks past a freshly built chain storefront and imagines it becoming anything other than what it already is. Modern development leaves no room for mystery or memory. It doesn’t want you to linger, just to stay long enough to spend some money, because if you do look too closely there’s practically nothing to find.Of course, no one is arguing that abandoned homes and storefronts should simply be left to rot forever. There is a real need for housing and commercial areas that are functional. But the problem is that we’ve convinced ourselves that functionality and character are mutually exclusive. We’ve accepted the idea that the only viable replacement for something old is something generic. That’s a failure of imagination, not economics. Communities deserve better than prefab repetition masquerading as improvement.
(10/20/25 6:59pm)
It's hard to imagine that at some schools, during lunchtime, there are kids hunched over Nokia phones, pressing buttons three times to reach the letter C. Yet in certain schools, there are kids who are pioneering the answer to the smart phone: “the dumbphone,” phones that lack all the features that modern phones have. While the name is straightforward, the fact that this choice of technology was not forced upon them by the teachers and administrators isn’t. Rather, at certain schools this return to a by-gone era is a deliberate act of resistance.Almost no one would be shocked to learn that kids are using smartphones. There have been many debates, especially in education, of how to untangle modern technology from our lives when we are so intertwined with it. The interfaces we are provided by smart phones are seamless: fancy things like a retina display and face ID have collapsed barriers between us and the screens themselves. This interface contrasts starkly with that of the phones created in the early 2000s, where the most intuitive feature was sliding keyboards. But between two decades, the difference between flip-phones and the newest iPhone is the age-old goal of smartphone companies to “make an app for everything”. This promise sounded a lot less threatening twenty years ago, when people were frustrated with tiny screens and even tinier buttons for texting. But now people have a new frustration: phone addiction.The seamless nature of phones with touchscreens unsurprisingly means these devices provide a very easy means of escapism. If you are on a train you play a game, if you have any lapse in attention you have a means to chat with anyone you want. Boredom has been replaced by short term dopamine, a sort of “crowding out” effect that makes it difficult to pick up a book if you lack the willpower. The competition for our attention has become so fierce that even the owners of the phones are jumping in the ring.This is where the "dumbphone" movement gains traction. It may seem ridiculous to intentionally place a digital handicap upon yourself– but that's exactly the point. It's about making that self-deterministic choice and returning to more meaningful tasks. The act of choosing an older phone is difficult yet feels meaningful, exactly like working out or any of the millions of things screen-time could be replaced with. For some students, choosing a device that can only make calls and send texts rids them of having to sacrifice reading or talking to people. Instead of being tethered to a device that dictates their every moment, these students are choosing to dictate their own.There's many obviously positive implications to this concept. When a student isn't constantly distracted by a buzzing pocket, they can engage more deeply with their studies. They can participate more fully in discussions without retreating to their phone, absorb information without the urge to check their notifications, and dedicate more time and energy to long-term dopamine. The subtle art of boredom, once a catalyst for creativity and introspection, can return. Without the immediate gratification of endless entertainment, students might find themselves turning to books, engaging in more face-to-face conversations, or simply allowing their minds to wander and explore ideas.Of course, the transition isn't without its challenges. Navigating a world where smartphones are ubiquitous can be isolating for those who opt for simpler technology. There are practical concerns, too. How do you coordinate with friends for a last-minute study group when you can't easily send a group message? How do you access essential school information that's only available through an app? These are valid questions, and the students embracing dumbphones are often finding creative workarounds. They might rely on older, more reliable methods like phone calls or pre-arranged meeting times. They might even leverage the limited functionality of their phones to be more deliberate about their communication, ensuring that when they do connect, it's for a specific purpose.If the tediousness can be overcome, dumbphones may prove to be more than a reactionary trend. It’s at least a statement that says we can choose how we engage with the digital world, and that sometimes, less is more. It’s a reminder that in our quest for connection and information, we shouldn’t lose sight of what actually matters: our focus, our well-being, and our ability to be truly present in the world around us. As we grapple with the ever-increasing integration of technology into our daily lives, the students choosing to disconnect from the smartphone are, in their own way, leading the charge towards a more mindful and human future.
