I was surprised yesterday when my iPhone congratulated me with achieving the yearly goal of reading three books. It struck me as a bit sad, honestly. Three books in a whole year? That’s the bar now? If we're setting such minimal goals for ourselves, what kind of example are we setting for our kids? What expectations can we have for them, in terms of curiosity, learning, and critical thinking, when we’re applauding ourselves for doing the bare minimum? 3 books a year, Jesus. It makes me wonder whether we’ve just grown too comfortable with shortcuts, summaries, and scrollable content. And if that’s true, how do we turn it around - assuming it’s still reversible?

Phones and “smart” devices have fundamentally reshaped our everyday habits and how we engage with the world around us - especially when it comes to gathering and processing information. They've made it completely normal, even expected, to trade mental effort for convenience. Instead of memorizing routes, we follow GPS instructions turn by turn. Instead of doing mental math we use not even a built-in calculator, but a voice assistant. Instead of sitting with a question, researching it, or trying to recall what we already know, we instinctively reach for Google or ask Siri.

Take something simple like remembering a phone number. A couple of decades ago, most people could recall the numbers of their friends and family from memory. Today, we rely entirely on contact lists and cloud syncing. The skill of memorizing or mentally organizing bits of information has atrophied - not because we can’t do it, but because we no longer have to. That trade-off - less effort, more ease - seems harmless on the surface, but over time it changes how we think, how we learn, and what we expect from ourselves.

Speaking of books, that kind of interaction trains us to passively consume stories - like having an audiobook read to you instead of reading it yourself - which robs you of the chance to imagine, to wander, to get lost in the words. Imagine yourself growing up and never actually reading, just getting polished summaries from some new fancy AI model. "Lord of the Rings" shrinks down to a few paragraphs about bunch of folks hike across Middle-earth to toss a cursed ring into a volcano before a creepy guy in a tower gets it -because if he does, it’s bad news for everyone. And "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"? Just a quick headline about a drug-addict and drunk journalist failing to cover a race in the desert.

We’ve handed things off left and right - click-and-collect groceries, meal kits, even ride-sharing where no one learns how to drive or read the road anymore. If we’re going to move forward, we’ve got to realize just how much things we’ve let tech take from us including a simple joy of reading a book —and start taking it back.

Dads against the machine.