When mirrors become windows and screens open up

In this piece of creative nonfiction, I will adduce a variety of sources to argue that the smartphone has not only become an integral part of our daily interactions, but has also become a part of us, its users. The device has accomplished this first through its ceaseless demands on human attention, and second through its calculated habituation (read: manipulation) of anyone who handles it regularly. The result, I contend, is the entrance of a new type of mediator into human life, one that profoundly reconfigures both our relationship to ourselves and to our environment. Indeed, if the smartphone does not dissolve the boundary between the two entirely, it at least prompts us to radically reconsider it.