Just in case.

I remember when I bought my first mobile phone, around 1998. It was a Nokia, now renowned for being pretty much unbreakable. At that time, you had to pay careful attention to how much time you spent on the phone because you only had a limited number of minutes to use on your phone plan. It was similar with texts – you were limited so you had to spend them wisely.

Over time, this limit has obviously improved significantly. Even the most basic plans now come with unlimited calls and enough data to satisfy most people. It’s not that telecommunications companies became more generous. It’s because as technology advanced, data became cheaper, and unlimited plans became easier to offer without really increasing the cost to provide the product.

Fast forward to today, and now we can take as many photos, install as many games, store as many videos or save as many documents as we like, with no additional cost. Even if you have a ridiculous amount of data to store, purchasing extra storage comes at a bargain-basement price.

Free and frictionless.

Most people (98%) in the USA use a smart phone. It’s pretty similar in Australia at 97%. Across the globe, the figure sits at about 70.4%. 95% of teenagers now use one too.

All of these users most likely have plans that allow them to store a lot of information, either in the cloud or on their devices. And that’s not counting the data we store on TVs, PCs or household appliances of all kinds.

Data has become so cheap that we now no longer need to make a decision about what we should store, and what we should delete. It has now become an unconscious process – just save it all. At first glance, this seems like a great advancement. Why would we want to agonise over which photo to keep and which to delete? It’s much more convenient to be able to keep them all, and it’s one less decision that we need to make.

I’m personally not that much of a photo-taker, but even I’ll admit that I have more photos on my phone than I’ll ever look at. There’s not really much point to having them at all. But they are going to be there, just in case I need them.

Just in case.

It’s these three little words that I believe hide a significant problem. And it’s that we are becoming too reliant on having whatever we want, whenever we want it. Because there is no cost to having all this information, it makes sense to keep everything.

Just in case doesn’t stop here, though. It also applies to access to information. I’ve written previously that the news is not really helping us, but we are captivated by it and have access to an endless supply. We like to know the news, just in case it impacts us.

Technological advancements now mean that we can capture video footage cheaply and easily wherever we are. Home camera systems are commonplace. We can take footage of our bicycle commutes. We can see who is at our front door, even when we’re not at home. We can see what our pets are doing and even speak to them through our phones, many miles away.

Why do we do these things? Much of the time I’d say we do them just in case.

Of course, we sometimes use cameras because we want to record an entire journey as we go on that once-in-a-lifetime hike or cycling trip, or capture that fun family BBQ moment. But rarely would we utilise all the footage we record – we are capturing all of it, just in case we stumble across the perfect moment. The rest of it is consigned to the cutting-room floor.

We can’t bear the thought of missing something.

A few years ago we bought a new car. After we’d agreed on the model, we had the mandatory meeting with the person who is employed to sell us all the optional extras. Metallic paint, window tinting, floor mats, you know the things.

One of the extras jumped out at me as unusual, because it wasn’t an option the last time I bought a car. It was the built-in dashboard camera. These are described as “essential for recording driving incidents and providing security when your car is parked.” The salesperson told us a story about how she had one installed in her car. She loved it, because someone had crashed into her car in a parking lot when she wasn’t there, and she was able to see who had done it, and how it had happened.

We passed on the dashboard camera. It didn’t really bother me if someone hit my car when I wasn’t there. They might leave a note, or they might not. And I might even need to pay my insurance excess if I can’t find who the other driver was.

But ultimately, I didn’t really feel the need to know about all the things that might possibly happen when I’m not around. And that’s what we’re really doing – we’re recording everything that happens when we aren’t present… just in case.

I was at a dinner party where one of the guests received a notification on their phone that someone was at their front door in another suburb. For about ten minutes they were glued to their phone as they tried to work out who the person was, and why they were there.

Those security-conscious people among us may say that this is a brilliant invention. Imagine if someone broke into your house – you could see them and report it to the police. And I can see the merits of such a safety precaution. In reality though, most of the time you’ll never need such monitoring – it’s all there just in case.

Does monitoring really make us feel safe?

Initially it may seem that monitoring everything is just a smart thing to do. Why not record everything just in case we need it? It’s cheap and easy and we can get notifications right on our phone. What’s not to like?

The challenge is that once we have access to this sort of information, we’ll keep checking it. Once we start recording everything that happens, we’ll start to wonder what might happen if we don’t. And then we’re basically spending a lot of mental energy thinking about all the things that might, maybe or could happen., but usually don’t.

We have become accustomed to needing to know. Did I get any “likes” on my post? Did someone hit my car? Is someone at my front door? Has there been an accident? The way to answer these questions is to check and remain connected. If you haven’t received a notification about someone at your front door… maybe the system is not working. You’d better check to make sure the camera is still operating correctly.

Do these devices make you feel safe all the time? Or do they make you feel safe only for the instant that you can verify that the person at the front door was not a burglar, but was only a delivery driver. Could it be that they actually make us feel unsafe, because we’re now in a situation where we can be interrupted by a notification that tells us there is a problem, many kilometres away?

Sometimes when we go on holiday, my wife starts thinking about whether the house will be broken into while we’re away. Of course this is a possibility. But I think it’s nice that I don’t know whether the house has been broken into or not. If I was away on holiday and I was aware that a burglar broke into the house, I’d be preoccupied and worried, wondering what was stolen or destroyed. But when I don’t know, I can enjoy my holiday and deal with any issues when I return.

In this case, ignorance is bliss.

Awareness expansion.

Humans are interested in expanding their awareness, and this is easier than ever due to the advances in technology.

We like to read the news, to see what is happening around the world. We monitor many aspects of our lives, so we can remain aware of what’s happening even when we aren’t around. We like to check social media, so we can understand what our ever-growing collection of online friends is up to at any moment. We like to be notified when someone likes our post, even though that “like” possibly happened in the middle of the night, many thousands of miles away.

I remember when I ditched Facebook back in 2007. It happened after a sudden realisation that many of the “friends” that I had collected weren’t really friends, because I never saw them in real life. Since then, I’ve always believed that it is impossible for a human to remain really connected to more than a relatively small number of people at once.

In a similar vein, I don’t believe it’s healthy to remain aware of too many aspects of life at one time. This is what happens when we install monitoring systems, engage with social media and consume the news. We have too many points of awareness that clutter our minds and have the potential to interrupt our lives at key moments when we really should be paying attention.

Someone could be breaking into your house right now, whether you’re there or not.

Your car is possibly being vandalised as you read this sentence.

A family member might be coming down with a cold, or perhaps somebody you know has passed away just this second.

The question is, do you need to know about it right now? Most of the time, I’d say you don’t. Even if you did know about it, there’s a good chance that you couldn’t do anything to stop it.

When I go for a jog, I don’t take my phone with me. For that 40 minutes, I’m uncontactable. There could be an emergency during that time, but there rarely is. And if there was, I’d be powerless to do anything about it from where I am.

It all depends on the cost you are prepared to pay. You can pay the price of opening up your awareness to every potential problem at any hour of the day.

Or you could just make peace with the fact that sometimes you just can’t know, and that’s a good thing.