Can More Technology Reduce Smartphone Addiction? - Kai Wei - #010

Kai Wei is the CEO of www. TheLightPhone.com I continue our journey into the world of smartphone addiction by finding out about a new piece of technology whose goal is to be used as little as possible. It may seem like Kai is running against the grain by offering a product with the aim to be absent from our lives rather than a part of them, but it kind of makes sense. Expect to learn if the problem of too much technology can be fixed with more technology, why you shouldn't ever have your phone on the table at dinner and how being bored can be the most creative time of your week. Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Episodes You Might Enjoy: This Is How To Master Your Life - David Goggins - #577: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠⁠ How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs - Dr Jordan Peterson - #712: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠⁠ The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain - Dr Andrew Huberman - #700: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberma Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Hi friends. On last week's episode, we discussed how people can become addicted to social media. How cognitive biases that we don't know even exist in our brains are being manipulated by almost every social media that exists and how your phone is essentially a hacker in your pocket. The feedback this week has been absolutely fantastic. I've got so many tweets and messages from people saying that they are trying to reduce their phone time and this has helped to open their eyes to why it's not necessarily their fault. This week, I'm sitting down with Kai Wei, who is the CEO of the lightphone.com.

• 0:43Chris Williamson?

  And they think that they have developed a product which can enable us to spend more time off screen. I do think that there's an important question to be asked here and it is, can we fix the problem of too much technology with more technology? That's a question you'll have to answer yourself.

• 1:06Chris Williamson?

  Also, I do want to say that I was not sponsored or paid to interview Kai and I found him off my own back because of how interested I was in the product and I wanted to hear his philosophy on it. I also want to say that I'm considering buying one after my conversation with him, but that's completely independent. So here we go. Kai Wei.

• 1:44Chris Williamson?

  So Kai, welcome to Modern Wisdom. Very good to meet you.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:50Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much for coming on, man.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  You are CEO of the Lightphone.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:57Chris Williamson?

  So I got introduced to the product from a friend who just linked me to it online and I had a, I had a browse around and it seemed, it's a real, a real unique device as far as I can see. For those people who

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:13Chris Williamson?

  Those people who think that technology is sort of moving in one direction, which is more functionality, more integration with our lives. And you guys have come up with a product which kind of goes in the complete opposite direction. Do you think that would be fair to say?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, a lot of press mentioned us as anti-smartphone. But we always wanted to clarify that we're not anti-technology or anti-smartphone, which is trying to be more human about how we approach technology, specifically the smartphone that we all have 24/7.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I understand that. So can you give us some background to yourself? And how this concept came about?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. So my background is in design and design research.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Four years ago, wait, five years ago, I quit my job

• 3:16Speaker 01

  and joined this incubator that Google started in New York, specifically for designers, just because they think that, the hypothesis is that they think designers, when they put designers on the funding table, that the product we created with empathy can really create social impact. So we were, my co-founder Joe and I met in a space and we were encouraged to do mobile app, you know, just like any other startup.

• 3:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  So very soon that we realized, for both of us, that creating another app is the last thing we want to do. We were doing research about how human, how people interact with smartphone. We just kind of freak ourselves out, like, I'm sure you see this everywhere, not just in New York, in subway, in train station, in airport. Everyone is looking, 80% of the time is looking down. It doesn't matter who are they with or where they are. It is swiping away on the screen. We know that we check our phone 200 times or more than six hours a day.

• 4:34Chris Williamson?

  Is that the average, is that the average figure?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the average figure from from the research that we can find.

• 4:41Chris Williamson?

  Two hundred, two hundred times a day and six hours a day on average.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I mean, with teenagers, even worse with social media that that you know, it could be on their smartphone ten hours a day. It's just not human from our perspective. We can't really stare at the screen twenty four seven.

• 5:02Chris Williamson?

  That's crazy. I mean, I'd seen, I'm not sure how much truth there is in this. But I read a quote from an article that said something like in one week. Humans get more stimulation, more visual stimulation than they would have gotten in an entire year typically during their evolution.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  And you know, you are right to look at it, to step back a little bit from typical smartphone use and look at it as a an alien, I suppose, looking down on earth. You have all of the, all of the complexity and the beauty and the uniqueness of day to day life going on. And we all spend so much time staring down at our phones. So what, what year was this when you first went into the, into the project?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  It's in twenty fourteen, you know, we, we start, we started to, after research, we started to thinking about how do we create something that create physical object that could encourage and inspire more people to take a break.

• 6:10Chris Williamson?

  So can you

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Just like you said, like we go ahead.

• 6:13Chris Williamson?

  No, no, just can you take, take us through the research that you did on into people's phone use? Can you explain how that was conducted and who it was on and what it consisted of?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. I just, so we basically invited random, random people, friends we know. And we take away their smartphone for say like six hours or entire day. And we give them, you know, a free phone at a time and ask them to spend a whole day or six hours without their smartphone. And then what's interesting is that was that when they came back from the trip or after the day, you know, like. They have common feedback that the first half hour or first hour was extremely difficult because you have this anxiety that you don't know what to do. There's

• 7:07Speaker 01

  nothing on me. I can't, I can't pull, pull, pull out my smartphone and start swiping. I'm getting bored. What do I do? What do I do?

• 7:14Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Like everyone has that reaction in the first twenty, thirty minutes. However, what's magical is, is that after you get over that formal, you know, the fear of missing out feeling.

• 7:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Once you get over that, what's, what's gonna happen is you, you started to pay attention to, to other people, to, to the building, to the cloud, you know, like talk to strangers sometimes when you're waiting for a bus or waiting for subway. It is fascinating and, and they report back, it's like, you know, I have a, I have a, a lady came back saying that's the best day of their, her week, just because she remembers what happened during the day, like literally.

• 7:57Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. I think there's definitely a, a parallel that is run between how much you, how much of your day has been spent on your phone and how not mindful you have been throughout the day. Like anyone who is undergoing mindfulness practice and, and trying to be more present, the first, the first place to look, I think, that will be able to improve your ability to be present is to, is to put your phone down because by its very nature, having your phone out and in your hand is not being present. You're not where you are. You're somewhere else in a virtual space.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got a lot of, you know, feedback when we started Lightphone, you know, like the most logical, common question would be, hey, why do I need Lightphone? Right? I'll just turn on flight mode. I'll just, you know, leave my smartphone at home. Why do I need Lightphone? There, there are apps out there that, that could limit notification or turn off notification, you know, that, isn't that, isn't that, you know, possibly achieve the same purpose that, that, that Lightphone is offering? And my answer is always be that. We, I think we as human, we need object to inspire actions.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  And I think that's how, it's also how religious work, you know, you have all kinds of books and starters and Nicholas. It just needs something to, to inspire you, to encourage you to take actions.

• 9:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  You could also say, hey, why can't I use a Motorola flip phone, Nokia phone, uh, twenty years ago? And my argument is, okay, so how many people like you know actually do that?

• 9:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Not many, it's not special, like no one really do that because the experience of using those um, uh, uh, old, uh, vintage devices are not special. All we're trying to do is creating an object, a brand, and our brand message to make this connecting, to make, you know, uh, uh, uh, stay away from a smartphone special.

• 10:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So more people willing to take a break. You know, we're not, we're not trying to replace smartphones, saying, hey, your smartphone is bad, yeah, don't use your smartphone at all. We're not saying that, we're just saying, hey, you know, it's like we have different shoes, different clothes for different occasion. Your smartphone is great for emails, for FaceTime, your family, or gaming, whatever that you wanna do, social media. But what if sometimes all you wanna do is, you know, take a walk down the street? Or spending two hours with your family in the park? Or just, you know, be creative, try to concentrate, or uh, just sitting on the beach watching sunset? Why do you need a mini computer with you all the time?

• 10:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think that's a, that's a really good analogy to say about the different clothes. Because you're right, we, we have our loadout, so to speak, to use a gaming analogy, is different based on what the situation is that we're going into. You know, we wear different clothes and we have a different backpack to go to the gym versus to go to the office versus to go away on holiday. And, you know, when you're talking about a piece of, um, a piece of technology which takes up up to six hours of your day, so, you know, not far off a third of your waking life is spent on this one object.

• 11:28Chris Williamson?

  Making that more appropriate for the situation, gearing that in the same way as you do your outfit and your bags and your food and everything else, you know, you are right, it does seem like a like an odd thing to not be doing. So let's let's roll back. So you've you've you've taken people's phones off them during your your research. The people who have had an older phone with less functionality have noticed that they have an improved quality in their day. Was that the from there on, did that kind of kick off, right, we need to try and do something about this? We need to try and mirror the reduction in apps in a device? Or where did it go from there?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much. We just find it fascinating that pretty much everyone comes back saying that's the best hours, best time they had in the whole week, just because just because we've been bombarded with so much information all the time. And we and I think that's why we decided, hey, like, that's, that's what we want to do. You know, if you look at the current state of technology, right, everything that everyone else, Google, Apple, Samsung, whoever, they're all building product to move us to a more connected life. But there's no balance, no one's offering a healthy balance in a tech world to to offer a better option.

• 12:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I mean, why, why, you know, the the other argument would be, why would they? None of the, none of the companies inherently believe that there is anything wrong with too much phone use. The attention economy and advertising, which is what is paving the way for most of the apps that are on the phones, it's advertising time, at the time on screen is what these people are concerned about. So if you can make a device which goes longer and more immersively and is more seamlessly integrated with your life, that's more time on screen, that's better, right? You know, that from one side of the fence, that's the way that

• 13:35Chris Williamson?

  they're going to presume. Whereas it would appear that what people actually value in terms of what they consider to be time well spent is time off screen.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly what, in my opinion, that's a huge, it's almost a crisis of human being. Like, we are so blindly willing to give up what we have in front of us. Give up our thoughts, give up boredom, that, you know, boredom is supposed to be, feeling bored is how you be creative, how you, you know, look into yourself and start a conversation with yourself. But right now, because of attention business, because of all the business model in the app, not smartphone, app.

• 14:23Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  All of this model in your app is trying to grab your attention, grab your time, so they can make money out of it. They could either, you know, put in more advertisement or lure you to subscribe service. There's nothing wrong with that, that's how company work. But the problem is, like, when everything's doing that, your device is just, it's not, it's, we're putting ourselves in a disadvantage.

• 14:46Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  As a human.

• 14:48Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, I think we are vulnerable and I think one of the big, one of the big things, I listened to, what kind of got me on to this, this topic specifically was a podcast that Tristan Harris from Time Well Spent did with Sam Harris halfway through last year. And I know that that was really eye opening for a lot of people. And for me to see that and to look at the persuasive techniques that are being used by app developers and the companies that are behind some of the most highly used and highly engaged social media sites in the world, it feels, it does feel like you're being tricked.

• 15:31Chris Williamson?

  It, I know that it's not that there's some evil cabal of people in hooded robes sat behind, you know, in some dark dungeon somewhere, that's not the way it is. But it kind of, it kind of does feel a little bit like that, you know, as a user, you, you're kind of this rat in a maze, getting, getting forced around this app loop and, you know, you, before you know it, you've spent forty five minutes in bed on a morning and you're late to make breakfast and you, you're late to go and do the things that you actually wanted to do with your day because you've been stuck in a loop.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and as a designer, it's like when, you know, when we design app, if we were to design app, you always want to make sure like every step away is enticing. You create this page, the next page, that all makes sense, all interesting, so people spend more time on your app, they follow through, complete your process. You know, as a designer, that's how we design, if we are designing app, that's how we design app. And that's why, and that's how business modeling app benefit from it too.

• 16:39Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  We're just so vulnerable as human that I think with Lightphone, we wanted to also, you know, start a conversation of, you know, why can we have different options, right? Why can't, why can't we up our, of smartphone and just, you know, use something else so that we won't be hijacked? We're using something that, that actually designed to respect us. You know, it's not designed to grab your time, attention, or, you know, make you spend more money on it, they just want to sell you something.

• 17:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  What can, why can't we design something beautiful and that respect humans' time?

• 17:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think what's interesting is that this, there's kind of two, two sides to, to looking at this, or three sides, should I say, to looking at this, at this problem, as far as I can see. One of them is what Tristan Harris appears to be focusing a lot of his time on, which is coming at it from an ethical design perspective. So he's trying to have a change in the culture on a designer's side, so that they're thinking about what they're doing with the apps. I think on another side, there is tactics that normal people and normal smartphone users can use in terms of reducing their time on screen or improving

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  the quality of their time on screen. And then there appears to be a third, a third side of that, which is looking at solutions to the smartphone, to smartphone use overall. And I think that, to me, that appears to be where the Lightphone fits in.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think Tristan's approach is very interesting and it might be able to create might be able to create a long-term impact. But in my opinion, you know, it's that it's the business model that drove the addictiveness of our app. It's not a designer. It's like if there's not, you know, if business model is not trying to force you to spend more time, enticing you to spend more time, they make money, designer won't do that because they won't, you know, usually designers following what's company's policy and they're usually not the one making the final decision.

• 18:57Chris Williamson?

  So you're saying you're saying that for as long as the attention economy is driving revenue through time on screen, the app developers are going to continue to do that. So all they're doing is meeting a brief, right?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you also have an app, you just within the ecosystem, the smartphone app, it will be, so there's a psychology study that we that we learned that the only the presence, just the presence of your smartphone on the table changed our conversation, you and me, if I'm sitting right across you and I have my phone out, that changed our conversation because we, you and we both expect our conversation will be interrupted. We will pick up our phone and text and look at you and talk at the same time, we will

• 19:51Speaker 01

  look at the notification, like I think just the presence of your smartphone really changed our behavior.

• 20:00Chris Williamson?

  That's so interesting.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy how smartphone immersed into our daily life and it's also fascinating how we are not fighting back.

• 20:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 20:17Chris Williamson?

  For sure. I think what's really interesting is you've said there, having a smartphone out on the table, you're not the first person who's cited this, actually. Youssef, one of the co-hosts, mentioned this on a previous podcast. It's really funny that you've both come up with the same story, but it's really interesting. Smartphone is such a ubiquitous part of our lives, but yet, in the same sentence, having it out changes our behaviour. So that shows that although it's accepted, it's not natural. If it was natural, it wouldn't make any difference, but it's not. It is an impingement, it is a restriction on our time and on our normal discourse.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because this is so addictive, like you can't, we all have this nervous habit to just check it every couple of minutes, every couple of seconds. It's just extremely powerful, has so much power over us. Yeah, we just don't, we just feel like we need to do something else to help out.

• 21:22Chris Williamson?

  I agree, man. I agree indeed. But yeah, like you say, Tristan's approach from Time Well Spent and the Centre for Human Technology, both of those, check them out if you're listening, and the links will be in the description below. Those are important systemic changes, but they're a cultural change. And I do think that that's going to come about through understanding, through disseminating information. And you know, you are right, that the economy at the moment is driving people in that direction. So it's not, it's not a fix which can be

• 22:03Chris Williamson?

  reached very quickly. I don't think that it's the sort of solution which is going to manifest itself, or it's a destination, should I say, which is going to be reached very quickly.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I obviously wish that that could bring like immediately impact as well. I think we, as human, we need, we need to fight back.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  With Lifeform, I think our philosophy, when we started designing, designing it and creating a vision, we don't, we don't really see Lifeform as a solution to smartphone addiction. The Lifeform to us, it's actually, it's a question that we want to post to our users. What is the question? The question is, when you go out with Lifeform, you have no smartphone, you have no social media, no game, no message, no notification. What are you gonna do?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  What's important in your life? What are you gonna think about? Who are you gonna talk to? When you get bored, what's, what's essential to you? Like, I think, I think all this profound question that we, right now, especially nowadays, that we have smartphones all the time, you just, you know, take it out and, and spending time on it. We forget it, do all that. I think that's like so important to us as human to, to really have time, create an environment, creating the time for us to, you know, have a conversation with ourselves.

• 23:40Chris Williamson?

  I think, I think that's, I think that having a conversation with yourself is, is such a, a really important message. We were, we were discussing in Life Hacks 101, one of the podcasts that we recorded not so long ago. We discussed that during meditation and mindfulness practice, a lot of the time when you quieten down the mind, you end up having thoughts and ideas that come to you, and they never come to you at any other time of the day.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:09Chris Williamson?

  And that's absolutely due to the fact that you do not have this distraction, this barrage of, of stimulus that's taking you away from being with your thoughts and taking you into a world that you've seen a million times before. The images are different and maybe the text's different, but the, the experience is the same. Do you know what I mean?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's what makes us human. I, I think we, we just, we can't forget about it. That's, that's why we're human. We're not, not AI, we're not, you know, machine. Like, we, we. We ask ourselves stupid questions. We ask ourselves silly questions. We get bored.

• 24:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  We get angry. We get jealous. We get, it's just, yeah, like, that's so important to humanity. Um, so, uh, actually, we, we, you know, it's been, um, three years since we started Lightphone. We, we have ten thousand users, uh, around the globe, and now we're asking ourselves, how, how do we encourage people to go light more often? Uh, go light meaning leave your smartphone home and go out.

• 25:18Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  How do we do that more often? How do we stay away from smartphones?

• 25:23Chris Williamson?

  Uh, yeah. So we've, we've danced, we've danced around it. Can you take us through what the Lightphone is from bottom to top?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, technically, uh, Lightphone is a quarter-cross-sized, um, mobile phone that only makes and receives phone calls. Um, there's nothing else on it. No messaging, no notification, no internet, no social media. So how it works is that you basically pair, uh, Lightphone with your smartphone. And when you wanna use Lightphone, you could turn on Lightphone, turn your smartphone, leave your smartphone behind, and go out without all the distraction and noise. So you, you are able to enjoy the moment and be more present.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Uh, but when someone calls you on your smartphone, um, the call will get forwarded to, uh, your Lightphone. So you won't miss important calls. That means, uh, there's no distraction, no noise.

• 26:26Chris Williamson?

  Right, I understand. So I've done a little bit of, a little bit of reading and, and had a look around. Am I right in thinking that you're allowed to call nine people? Is that right?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, uh, allow users to, uh, save up to nine speed dials, uh, on our Lightphone.

• 26:46Chris Williamson?

  So you've got the one to nine on the keypad, and you can call the one through nine as outgoing calls?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yes, that's the initial intention. The reason that we make that design choice is that during research, when we ask people to go out with, you know, leave their smartphone behind, go out with a flip phone or old mobile phone, we also ask our participant to write down the numbers they need for the day. And no one has more than six, like no one has more number they want or more than six. No one has that. Like, why do we have thousand contacts in our phone?

• 27:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And that's why we make that decision.

• 27:31Chris Williamson?

  Yes, you're so right. You are so right. I think the top, probably of the top 20 people that you call, there would be, or of your entire phone book, you're right, that 95% of the people that you're going to call most regularly are going to be a very small number of phone numbers. And some of those are probably going to be pizza deliveries and takeaways and stuff like that. So, okay, so I'm right in saying that you keep your own number as well, right? So it's not a separate phone, it's kind of like an extension of your existing phone?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we offer that call masking feature in US only. So in US, when you get Lightphone, you could, you know, pair Lightphone with your smartphone and the Lightphone will basically use your smartphone number. So when you make phone calls on Lightphone, it will still shows out as your, you know, as you, not a different number.

• 28:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Okay. So what is the rollout at the moment of Lightphone? Where is it available and where is it functioning?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, we ship internationally and at the moment...

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I think we shipped roughly ten thousand plus uh iPhones to fifty different countries.

• 28:52Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  And it is amazingly like we we learned this problem is so universal. Um it it was not just US or UK, it's like everywhere, especially in Asia countries too.

• 29:06Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Uh we were in Hong Kong airport like when we, you know, meeting uh when uh went to Hong Kong to meet suppliers. We saw the stickers everywhere uh um in the airport that ask people to look up. Because it's become a safety issues everywhere in airport, people just like staring their phone bumping to each other.

• 29:27Chris Williamson?

  Oh, the what the it's such a big issue, people looking at their phones. That it's an actual safety hazard, it's been classed as a safety hazard that people aren't looking up as opposed to looking down.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

• 29:41Chris Williamson?

  That's crazy.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Let's see, yeah, we all have so much in life, in our life, right, have friends, family, you have, you know, like trees, cloud, buildings, architecture. Beautiful uh uh uh uh stores like, but we just willingly give it, give those all up. Um, so, yeah.

• 30:00Chris Williamson?

  You're you're really right, I think what something that one of my um, one of my work colleagues said to me about a year ago. On a similar, a similar subject and he asked, what was the last three things that you liked on any social media?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Chris Williamson?

  And if the listeners can try and do that, if unless they've got their phone in front of them now. If you can try and think about the last three things that you clicked like on on Instagram or Facebook. Uh I have absolutely no idea. Uh the, you know, those, those things were so worthy of my time. That I sacrificed some of my life to go on to this device and look at them and then. Give a judgment of positivity in response to it. And yet, upon being asked to recall it twenty minutes later, I can't even tell you what it was.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just think so quickly. It's just we don't, you know, we don't really spend time digesting. You just flip the throw. We have so much information all the time.

• 31:06Chris Williamson?

  You're right. Yeah, it's it's it's almost such an information overload as people go through through their phone that the depth of interaction has to be by very nature shallow in order to fit the breadth of consumption in. Do you think that's fair to say?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Totally. And and I I also think it's because it's easy. We always we we, you know, we're human. We always want, we're lazy. We want easy way out. That's why we have smartphone. But when you feel challenged, when you feel awkward, when you feel bored, you have you have a way out. Same thing with social media, same thing with anything. Like when you have a difficult thought, you just wanna, you know, instead of like really dive into it, really like think about it, you just blindly consuming information without even thinking about it. Yeah.

• 32:02Chris Williamson?

  The boredom, the boredom thing is a really interesting one as well. I'd seen a study online that said something like more than sixty percent of people admit to using their phone on the toilet. And I I honestly saw that and thought, is it only sixty percent? Like, I don't know anyone, I don't know anybody that goes to the bathroom and doesn't take their their mobile phone with them. Like, yeah, and that that bathroom thing is such a big deal. Like, you know, that's the one time where you probably can afford to be alone with your thoughts. And we're, you know, we're having a swipe through Instagram and we're doing all all bits and pieces like that. You think, well,

• 32:41Chris Williamson?

  yeah, the boredom is part and parcel, and the silence is part and parcel as well. And I I think that the rates of anxiety, mental health and suicide is the number one killer of men in the UK under the age of forty, you know, rates of anxiety. It's Mental Health Week this week, actually, in the UK. And in a society where we're trying to reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and I'm going to guess that there will be some some studies that I'm not aware of. Is smartphone use, has smartphone use been scientifically linked with anxiety and depression yet? Or are you aware if it has?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I am not, but I might, we always believe that being more connected won't make us any happier. Uh, looking at people's feet won't make you happy, it's just gonna make you more anxious. You're gonna compare and, and, and for, for teenagers, for young people that didn't really, didn't really realise that, you know, social media or internet, it's just one side of, it's one small angle of this person's life. Like you see, you know, you see like, oh, I'm always pottering on my face, pottering on Facebook, I'm always out, travelling on my Facebook or Twitter or social media, but that's not real life.

• 34:05Chris Williamson?

  At all.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Reflection of one angle of this person's life. We as humans, we always wanna show the positive side, we always wanna show that we're laughing, we're having fun. No one's, no one posting on Facebook saying, uh, my boyfriend just dumped me or my girlfriend just dumped me.

• 34:22Chris Williamson?

  I had a really, I had, or even on the other end of the scale, like, you know, at least, at, at least that's interesting. No one is going on and saying, nothing really happened today, today was a little bit dull. Like, you know, it's not, it's not newsworthy, is it? But there's a, a really good quote that I read and I, I reiterated this on a recent podcast that said, social media shows you the best of everybody else's lives whilst you view the worst of your own and you compare it to the worst of your own. It's the best of everyone else and the worst of you. No, it's not at all, man. So going back to the light phone, um, I think what was, what's interesting is,

• 35:04Chris Williamson?

  there's a couple of, a couple of big podcasters that some of my friends follow, who do either a phone-free afternoon or they have actually created a rudimentary version of what the light phone does by getting like a old, you know, a pay-as-you-go, um, the ten pound Nokia phone. And they've, you tried to cobble together a solution like this. And a couple, a couple of the issues that those guys have come up against. So one of them, what the, the problem with not having a phone on you at all is that. I think there's definitely a level of safety of knowing that you've got your phone with you.

• 35:45Chris Williamson?

  Like, you know, you, there may be an emergency, either you needing to contact someone or someone needing to contact you. So I think, I think going completely phone free holds so much anxiety for some people. That whatever level of freedom they would gain by not having their smartphone would be nullified. And then probably actually even made worse by shitting their pants that something bad had gone wrong. And that they weren't able to be contacted or that they couldn't contact someone. So I, I think going completely phone free, because phone free isn't the issue, is it? The phone isn't the issue.

• 36:28Chris Williamson?

  It's the overuse and it's the immersion in apps. That's, that's the issue.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Phone is just a tool. It's supposed to be a tool. It's not an entertaining, you know, a social media device. It's a tool that you use to talk to people, people, to communicate with people. You know, and that's what I want to do, like, you, you, you, you are exactly right that going completely phone free, it's, it's dangerous. Cause what if you want to, you know, what if run into something that you need to call people? What if, you know, some emergency happened? And um, life on to us, uh, we, our thought is creating a peace of mind when you go out without smartphone. So, you know, almost knowing that, hey, uh, uh, I could call my family if I need to.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  My, you know, my friends can reach out to me if they want to, but other than that, nothing else. I, I was just recently had a conversation with a, a woman in our working space. And she was telling me that uh, life phone is like a quarter. I'm not sure in UK, it's called quarter, a quarter is a 25 cents coin.

• 37:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  So it's like, it's like a quarter in the old days. I was like, why is like a quarter? And she was like, because, you know, in the old days, without smartphone, you always want to have a quarter on you so you can use the payphone.

• 37:48Chris Williamson?

  Just in case you need to make it. Yeah, that's such a good analogy.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  It's a piece of mind.

• 37:54Chris Williamson?

  That really is. And then I think so the second, let's say the second solution that a couple of people had come up with was to get like a, you know, like you did with the, during your study, you gave people like an old flip phone. But I think another one of the issues is when you're asking people to make a lifestyle change like this, it needs to be as convenient as possible. It has to stack the deck in the favor of doing the thing that you want them to do. And obviously, if you, one of my friends tried to do this in the UK, and he got a ten pound pay as you go, pay as you go phone, then realized that because he's got a micro SIM from an iPhone, he then has to go and buy an adapter to make the micro SIM into a

• 38:39Chris Williamson?

  normal sized SIM, so that you can fit that into the phone. And that means like, taking his iPhone apart every time he wants to do it, taking the back off this old phone, taking the battery out, you know, fitting it in, fitting it into the new like micro SIM adapter and putting it in. You just think, well, I'm not surprised that he only stuck up with it for like, one day a week for three weeks, because I couldn't be bothered to do that. It's not, it's not convenient. And the thing is that the disparity between moving from a, a situation of such hyper convenience with Google Maps and Wikipedia and Google on, you know, on a device, to think, right, not only have I got to give this

• 39:20Chris Williamson?

  up, but I've got to get through all of these really shitty hurdles, fiddly hurdles, to give myself less functionality. It, you know, it doesn't surprise me that, that that wasn't a very successful approach.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I said, it's just not special enough for you to actually want to do it. I mean, to successfully encourage people to, to, to stay away from smartphone. I mean, I, I think that's why we create a light phone. It's well designed, it's beautiful. So you might, you know, for people that never thought about going, going out with a smartphone, might, it might get intrigued and say, hey, this thing goes cool. I'll go, I'll go.

• 40:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. It looks aesthetically, the smartphone looks really, really cool. It's just a little bit bigger than a credit card, right?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a credit card size and it's a a bit thicker than the actual credit card. But it's easy for you to put in a wallet, just pockets, you don't actually feel it's on you.

• 40:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  That's that's the purpose. Uh, when we designed Lightphone, tried to decide what's the phone factor. We, uh, you know, we tried to think about what is that thing? What is the thing that we always have on us, but we don't really notice that we have them? It's a credit card, it's your ID.

• 40:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  So that's why we make the design decision.

• 40:49Chris Williamson?

  You've matched, you've matched, you've matched the phone with something that already exists, which is the, which is the credit card. I think it's, it was interesting what you said at the very start about it needing to be something that was beautiful, that is kind of a little bit like planting a flag in the ground, so to speak. It's making a mark and it's you, you're attaching, you're attaching your desire to go phone free and to do less tech usage to something which you can almost feel proud of a little bit. You, you have, you have something and you feel proud of it and you think, oh, this is, this is a, a, um, physical representation, a manifestation of my desire to better myself and to be more present.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel, I mean, uh, it's, it's reflected on our users, um, as well. Like, I feel really proud or honored that a lot of our customers that, uh, who bought a Lightphone, like they share, like it's almost, they, they share the, the, the moment when they get Lightphone. And, and they just feel proud, obviously sharing on social media is kind of ironic, but.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  So you can, you can see the, the, the proud that, you know, they want to share that, hey, I decide to do something. I, I make this choice. I'm gonna live this life from time to time. I'm gonna use my Lightphone all time to time. Call me if you need me. Like, we, we see that happening. Uh, uh, a, a lot of social media, people sharing Lightphone, um, with their friends. It's just fascinating to me. Like, it's almost become a lifestyle symbol, uh, I wanna say. Um, and we just feel really great. Uh, and through that, I think what we want to do is just to encourage more people to, to, to, to try to do that. You know, to try to stay away from smartphone, which we never do, like, no one does that.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Um. So we wanna, you know, just hopefully inspire more people globally to uh to try different solution, different shoes, different clothes, why not?

• 42:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think the, I think the different shoes and different um different outfits analogy is the best one that I've heard so far. I think that what was interesting is, you know, there's an argument to be made that fixing the problem of too much technology with more technology seems a little bit, a little bit circular, but

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 43:15Chris Williamson?

  That's like saying that there is a problem with riding a bike, so why buy a car? Or why have a pair of walking shoes? It's the same.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Different thing.

• 43:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's within the same realm, but it's a different, a different route to meeting a similar goal. And.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  I mean, we, we like, different shoes, different clothes, is how we always say it. We always, you know, like, if you compare um um iPhone to your smartphone. Smartphone, it's like, you know, it's like toolbox, again, it's like, it's all kinds of tool. You could, there's thousands of tools you don't need.

• 43:54Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  And iPhone is a screwdriver.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  So you could choose what you need. We can choose what technology we need in a specific condition, uh, situation. We don't have to take it all in. We, we need to make a conscious choice. Uh, but right now, it's no choice, it's all smartphone, everyone's making smartphone, everyone's having smartphone twenty four seven. It's the last thing you see when you go to bed.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  But if this is not addiction, what's, what is it?

• 44:27Chris Williamson?

  Oh, man, I think that's, I think that's a really good point to be made. That it is, you're right, it's the last thing that we look at before we go to bed. It's the first thing that we look at in the morning. It's there, uh, there was, there was a video that got put up the other day of a girl's twenty first birthday and there was, it was a Snapchat of her birthday cake coming over to her in a nightclub. And as this cake's come along and obviously someone spent a load of time making this cake and organizing this big procession to arrive with her. And the camera pans around to her sat on this table and she's watching her own 21st birthday cake arrive through the lens of her phone because she's so desperate to get the Instagram

• 45:11Chris Williamson?

  story to put up about that. And you think, oh, we've all been there, like, we've all done something, you know, videoing a gig or a videoing a concert or, you know, something beautiful that was happening. But, you know, who's it for? Because the memory of that happening for you will be much more valuable than the video that gets shown to your friends.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I know. I know. It's just, it's like, you go to a concert, everyone's putting their phone up, recording and blocking your view. I mean, every time I had that, I was like, oh, God, like, watch this concert.

• 45:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a really funny meme that I saw that was floating around on the internet. And it said, something like, I was sat down on the subway, looking at the man across from me, and he didn't have his phone out. He wasn't sat there texting or swiping through Instagram. He just sat there looking out of the window like a psychopath. And you think, that's such a comment on modern society, that that's, that's the weird thing to do.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that reminded me of a story, a story. Yeah, it's a story. So, so me and my co-founder, we, a couple of years ago, we were in San Francisco, doing this, you know, retail relationship things. But anyway, we were in line, in front of a restaurant. And in the line in front of us, there's a dad and his daughter. And his daughter just, you know, keep shouting and screaming, saying, I don't want to be here. This is bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I don't want to be here. So typically, you will expecting, you know, your dad, just like. Give her a smartphone, give her iPad, something to take her attention away.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  But he didn't do that. He sat her down and actually say that, hey, we talk about this. For them is the chance to learn. I was like, what?

• 47:20Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  I need to videotape this. This is so good.

• 47:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Expect him to say anything like that, but like, wow, I need to give you a light phone right now.

• 47:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, I think that that man's daughter has got a good chance of growing up to be a very mindful and well-balanced human being, who's going to be able to deal with awkwardness. She's going to be able to deal with her emotions coming to the forefront with sadness. And it's not going to need numbing or hiding away by

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:52Chris Williamson?

  by getting behind a phone. So Light Phone at the moment, I'm right in saying that you guys, you guys raised quite a lot of money on Kickstarter projects, right?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, so three years ago, we raised four hundred thousand Kickstarter. And then we go on, raised another three million from private investor just to build it. Yeah, building a phone from scratch, like from two individuals, it's just not easy. We're not.

• 48:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can't imagine it's a small undertaking, so three and a half million dollars.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much went into it. And especially we both have design backgrounds, we want to make sure like from packaging, from the phone itself, from the cable, it's all, you know, designed, made well, because it's an inspiration. It can be a shitty, cheap alternative options, like just throw away burner phone. It can be, it has to be beautiful, it has to be inspiring. The packaging too, we, I'm not sure if you saw the packaging that we did, it's a book.

• 49:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I have seen it. If anyone, if anyone hasn't, if you see it online, it's absolutely beautiful.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we wanted to, you know, tell people that when you get a life phone, you get an impression that it's not about feature, not about screen size. It's about the little moment of your life that if you put on a smartphone that you will notice. You know, like a picture of bird that flying through uh top of tree, a picture of old men sitting on the beach. You know, we want to tell people, hey, life phone is not about phone. Uh obviously, we're selling a phone, but it's not about the phone. It's about the value is, the value of life phone is, leave your smartphone behind, go out, enjoy your day, enjoy your time, like, you know, enjoy, enjoy time when it passed through, like, just don't uh,

• 49:57Speaker 01

  don't occupy yourself, your thoughts with, with fees.

• 50:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. It's weird, isn't it? Cause the, the light phone could probably be replaced with the life phone. You know, you, you're allowed, you're allowing yourself to have life as opposed to a phone.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 50:16Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  So.

• 50:18Chris Williamson?

  Where um, where, where is the, so the phone's functional, like, fully functional with the call forwarding and everything in the US, am I right? Is what about Canada? What about Europe? What's the, what's the plans moving forward to make this more accessible for, for people in other countries?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Oh, we actually, fifty percent of our customers are from uh international users. So for international users, you can still do call forwarding. The only, the only issue, the problem that uh um uh, the only thing that you don't have as international user is that um, we won't be able to mask uh your life phone number. So you will, you will essentially have two different numbers.

• 51:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but people, people when they call in, it'll forward on to the light phone. So that kind of doesn't matter. And then on the outgoing calls, there's only maybe nine people that need to have your second number in any case, right?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we were worried that this will be a, you know, like, stop international customer from, you know, buying Light Phone or using Light Phone. But to my surprise, it's not really changing the decision. So like I said, 50% of our customers are from UK, EU, Asia, different countries too. Pretty amazing.

• 51:47Chris Williamson?

  I think that, you know, a lot of people have identified that time away, time off screen, even if they haven't looked into this, and I'm talking like, normal, everyday person on the street hasn't delved down the rabbit hole of persuasive, of cognitive biases and persuasive techniques and, you know, time on screen reduction and all that. The normal person, I think, appreciates that they're using their phone too much. What's natural is, you know, there's only really two options. It's either go phone-free or kind of get a burner phone. And neither of those are tremendously attractive. So when the only hurdle that you do need to overcome is to have a second number, to

• 52:26Chris Williamson?

  me, that doesn't feel like a tremendously big, a tremendously big problem. Because you were, at the very least, you were going to have to have a second number anyway for the pay-as-you-go Nokia 2310 that you were going to look to use as a replacement.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could also potentially get a dual SIM card, dual SIM card with same number. I think, I believe, Vodafone or other carrier in Europe does offer that. So Chris, I'll feel bad if I didn't mention it. We are actually launching Light Phone 2 today.

• 53:05Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, today on Indiegogo, the thought is, you know, it's been 10,000 phones in three and a half years. Like I said, we keep asking ourselves, how do I make it? How do we encourage people to go light longer, to go light for good? You know, not a pair secondary device, but how do we do something that, that encourage, allow more people to go light for good?

• 53:36Chris Williamson?

  That's fascinating. So come on, tell us, tell us what Light Phone 2, tell us about Light Phone 2. I had absolutely no idea that this is happening.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if I use the same analogy that smartphone is a toolbox, Life Phone one is a scooter driver. Life Phone two is a Swiss Army knife tool.

• 53:55Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  So the Life Phone two, our goal is to position it as your primary phone. It's not a second phone that you pair with smartphone. We wanna, we wanna have this device to potentially um replace your smartphone. Uh it's a four G quadic size phone, the same, the same phone factor. Uh we add E Ink as the display uh and we're adding.

• 54:22Chris Williamson?

  Like a Kindle, right?

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Clock. Yes, like a Kindle, black and white, beautiful UI, simple UI. Um uh we add messaging to the second generation. Uh we're also uh potentially adding the ability to call Uber and alarm clock uh direction. But that's it. We're not gonna do like, we're not gonna become smartphone, but this to us, it's a Swiss, Swiss Army knife phone. That I think um a lot of people globally, globally are ready to make the switch.

• 54:56Chris Williamson?

  So are you, when you say messaging, are you talking SMS?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yes, SMS.

• 55:01Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so do you see Smartphone two as being a replacement for Smartphone one? Or do you see it as being an alternative, like you'd have a, you'd different scales of an, uh, uh, of a, like a car and a scooter? They perform the same task, but people don't necessarily, some people will want one and some people will want another.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. We're not, we're not, we're not replacing Life Phone one. We're just, you know, just because we got a lot of customer email saying, hey, I love Life Phone one, but can you just add text message? I wanna use Life Phone all the time, but without text message or direction or ability to call a taxi, I can't, you know, go lay all the time. I can't use it in a daily tool. And, and, and that's exactly how we position Life Phone one. You know, Life Phone one is a take a break phone, it's a vacation phone, it's a phone you use when you're sitting on the beach watching sunset.

• 55:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Um with Life Phone two, we wanna create a different option that, hey, for those people that are ready to. To give up smartphone, give up, give up being a slave of technology.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  This is, this is a, a option. It's not, it's not old school Nokia, old school uh uh Motorola. It's being display critical size uh with all the essential tool that you need in your daily life.

• 56:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Do you think, do you think that you guys are at risk of um receiving criticism from people who, who think that it's a, just a um, a nefarious route to try and sell another piece of technology to people?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Maybe, but we, I, I, I actually have, you know, we, when we started Lightphone 2, we actually did a survey asking our customer, hey, do you, do you think it will, it will be, you know, hypocritical of us to trying to do a Swiss Army knife tool? And eighty percent of our customers saying no, because um they believe that adding, adding more features that allow them to um stay away from the smartphone longer without social media, without um uh internet, um without all the distractions. It's, it's actually pretty appealing to them.

• 57:17Chris Williamson?

  So the extra, the, the extra features net a positive?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's essential tool. Like I said, we're not trying to become a smartphone. All I want to do is to invite more people to stay away from this um, uh from this, you know, mini computer we have with us twenty four seven. We don't need that. We, we have our iPad. We have our desktop. With Lightphone 2, you could basically do anything else on your laptop, iPad, pad, and you, you have your Lightphone 2 for calls, messaging, uh calling taxi, alarm clock. That's it.

• 57:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I understand completely. I think um it's been absolutely fascinating chat, Kai. Would, would you be able to explain where everyone can find you? So the original Lightphone, where the, where the campaign for the new one's going to be and how they can contact you online?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you could check out lifeon2.com, that's where our campaign is and you can find our website through the campaign as well. And I'm happy to answer any questions from your listeners. My email is [email protected], K-A-I-W-E-I, thelifeon.com.

• 58:32Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Kai, I really, really appreciate your time, man. Am I right in thinking, are you guys in stock for the Lightphone 1 at the moment? Or are you waiting on a new batch to be delivered for shipping?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we actually sold out of Lightphone 1. We have no inventory left at the moment. So we've been taking reservations for Lightphone 1 at the moment. And we're also taking reservations on Lightphone 2 at the lifeon2.com.

• 59:04Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. Thank you very much for your time, Kai. I really appreciate that. Links to everything will be below in the description. Good luck with your Indiegogo campaign. I really do think that what you're doing is born of a place of goodwill. I know that there is a criticism to be made. Fixing too much tech with more tech is not a solution. But I don't think that you guys are trying to achieve a money-making. Obviously, it needs to be a commercially viable business. But I don't think that you guys are aiming to do this from a place of bad faith. I think that it is genuinely something that's born of the desire to make people's lives more livable. And I think it's a very noble pursuit.

• 59:47Chris Williamson?

  And I think that I hope that you do very, very well with it in the future.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you.

• 59:54Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much, man. Thanks for chatting.