What your smartphone steals from you

Lamm writes from four years of living without a smartphone and argues that digital convenience can make people more isolated by removing occasions to ask another person for help. A missed airport shuttle and a bus station that offered only a QR code become an example of how public services can assume universal access to a personal device.

The essay reframes dependence on other people as a source of relationship and shared responsibility rather than a failure of self-sufficiency. Its personal narrative opens a useful design question: whether essential services preserve human alternatives when digital-only systems become the default.