Nautilus

Dear iPhone—It Was Just Physical, and Now It’s Over

I can’t count the number of times I pulled out my phone just for the feeling of unlocking the screen and swiping through applications, whether out of comfort—like a baby sucking her thumb—or boredom—like a teenager at school, tapping his fingers on a desk.Photograph by cunaplus / Shutterstock

s a kid, I’d sometimes try to imagine what life would be like without a particular sense or part of my body, like with questions from the game. I’d try to erase the sound of my mom’s piano playing, the sight of the ground growing smaller as I soared on the tree swing in my backyard, or the feeling of playing basketball so hard my lungs might explode, but I just couldn’t. How could life go on without these sensations that were so

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