Simo / Living With It

The reasonable middle between always on and dramatically off.

Two loud positions get most of the attention. The workable answer sits between them.

One position holds that a person should be reachable at all times, that a call unanswered is a small failure and a message unread for a day is rudeness. It is rarely stated so plainly, but it operates as a norm in a good many workplaces and friendships. The other position is the theatrical refusal: the phone left in a drawer, the announcement that one has given it up, the pleasure taken in being difficult to contact. Both are performances, and both put the object at the centre of a person's account of themselves, which is a curious place for a piece of equipment.

The middle is duller and works better. It amounts to being reachable in a way that is predictable rather than constant. If people know roughly when you answer and roughly when you do not, they stop reading silence as a signal, and the silence stops needing to be defended. Predictability does the work that either constant availability or dramatic refusal attempts to do, and it does it without requiring anyone else to change their habits or to be impressed.

It also removes the moral heat. Someone who does not answer between certain hours is not making a statement about modern life, and does not have to explain themselves at a dinner. The arrangement is closer to an office having opening times than to a philosophy. Objects work best when the rules around them are boring, and a boring rule that is actually followed will beat an ambitious one abandoned by the second week, which is the usual fate of ambitious rules about anything.