Can More Technology Reduce Smartphone Addiction? - Kai Wei - #010

The previous episode of Modern Wisdom argued that the phone is “essentially a hacker in your pocket”, and the host opens this one by reading out the response: listeners wrote in to say they had started cutting their screen time, and that the framing had shown them the problem was not entirely their own fault. He then names the question the episode will circle — whether we can “fix the problem of too much technology with more technology”. He also discloses that the interview was neither sponsored nor paid for, and that he sought the guest out himself after becoming interested in the product.

The guest is Kai Wei, CEO of the Light Phone. Wei resists the anti-smartphone framing that press coverage has attached to the device; the aim, he says, is “trying to be more human about how we approach technology”, specifically the handset people carry around the clock. His own background is in design and design research, and he joined a Google-backed incubator in New York that was built on the hypothesis that putting designers on founding teams produces work with social impact.