Why Books Are My Metaverse: Part II
Because I Can’t Not Look at My Smartphone
This is a multi-part series that shares my experience in building the Sol Reader.
“Books are my metaverse” means a lot more than the simple pun of building a smart-glasses product focused on reading. In a few short missives, I’ll tease this out by diving into the “why” behind the Sol Reader – a new wearable e-reader. We touch on the state of AR/VR/MR, The Jetsons, smartphones and what they do to our brains, the joy of reading, and more!
Are books your metaverse, too? Join our waitlist or shoot me a note at ben@solreader.com.
My reliance on digital-based dopamine hits started almost 30 years ago. At a boarding school in Illinois, I’d randomly run to my dorm’s computer lab (sometimes even in the middle of a game with friends) to check email or notesfiles (a UNIX precursor to something like Reddit for local communities), one of the two primary forms of random-reward dopamine inducers that started rewiring my brain at age 15.
Since then, the form of the delivery vehicle has changed! Unix terminal to desktop computer in my dorm room to laptop, to Palm Treo (smart phone circa 2003) to BlackBerry to iPhone.
The content providing the hit itself has also morphed some – email and notesfiles, to AIM, to Facebook, to Twitter, and now TikTok, SnapChat, Instagram, Slack, and my favorite news sites provide that random hit. And of course, as is well documented, the means of hijacking my brain and attention has become more sophisticated. I’m pretty sure the designers of UNIX systems weren’t thinking about my psychology to bring me to log into those machines as compulsively as I did during my adolescence.
If you want to stop a habit, it’s very difficult to simply will yourself to stop doing it. Especially when there’s a chemical dependency involved. There has to be a replacement: the Sol Reader is, essentially, my nicotine gum.
I’ve tried a lot of tricks to shake the dopamine dependence. Common schemes like deleting apps, making passwords hard to find, leaving my smartphone in a closet or in a different room. And more extreme schemes like swearing off email altogether, delegating it to an executive assistant who would triage every email and hand deliver (paper!) them to me to review and respond to. Or the scheme that got the most legs — having two smartphones for a while — the one with everything and the “dumber” one without any external inputs. Until that became a huge hassle for friends and family who needed to get a hold of me (“what’s Ben’s other number again?”).
Ultimately, none of these things have worked. I still am overly connected and enjoy the dopamine hit from the next post, article, email, instant message, whatever.
What I’ve learned is simple: There’s no way I can discipline or scheme myself out of wanting the feeling of “You’ve got mail!” For me, this says it all:
My compulsion to overeat on internet information and always-on connectivity is too strong. And the devices and software that deliver it are too perfect. Sure, there’s probably plenty of nutritious things in what I consume on the internet, but it’s awash in junk food as well.
Something different happened to me a year ago when I started reading daily on the Sol Reader. When I was “in-glass” (our term for reading while wearing the device), not only was I relaxed and comfortable (reading in bed this way is awesome), my mind didn’t seem to crave that hit nearly as much. Certainly we don’t have the data or studies as to why that might be. But the combination of comfort and a completely immersive experience of reading hijacked my brain in a new way. Before, even with a physical book or e-reader, if my phone was anywhere close and my mind wandered, I’d get up and head over to it. But not when tucked comfortably in bed wearing my book.
In hindsight, this makes good sense. If you want to stop a habit, it’s very difficult to simply will yourself to stop doing it. Especially when there’s a chemical dependency involved. There has to be a replacement: the Sol Reader is, essentially, my nicotine gum.
A friend who helped me out in the early days of Sol Reader would constantly remind me, “You can’t just say smartphones are problematic, you have to give people something better.” There have been many attempts to give people a better or different smartphone to address some of these issues. And I’m sure Sol Reader isn’t the only way to tackle this problem. But it’s working for me and the users who have enjoyed being part of the early alpha testing over the last few months. So now, instead of feeling like Buddy the Elf, the sticker on my computer is this:
And while I still enjoy the dopamine hit of my smartphone, my ScreenTime is way down, and I’ve read more novels in the last twelve months than any year since I was 14, strangely enough, the year before my brain was rewired.
Are Books your metaverse, too? Join our waitlist or shoot me a note at ben@solreader.com.
Great idea! We're working on finding the right tools for community engagement and plan to launch something in the next couple of months. Stay tuned!
Just found this through an Instagram ad and signed up, then found your Substack. Is there any kind of Discord server or forum for hopeful-future-owner discussion/feedback?