Paper short abstract:

"Apps Against Apps" also known as digital wellbeing or productivity apps reveal important insights into human-technology relations. Aesthetic promises made by app companies promoting "Digital Detoxing" expose tensions and the need for transformations within our relationship to digital technologies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with the phenomenon of digital detoxing framed within the school of thought known as postphenomenology and mediation theory. It investigates apps against apps (also known as digital wellbeing or productivity apps) through exploring variations of aesthetic promises made by the app companies. A small paradigmatic lineup aims at a comparative analysis to explore variations of logo designs and the (visual) language used on the app websites. The main question explored is how the notion of digital detoxing is being communicated through aesthetic means such as color and form. Ideas of a good life, good health, more (quality)time, better focus or happiness “without” or with “less technology” find expressions in photographs, graphics and logos using for example symbols of nature, resistance or freedom. Phenomenologically, the first impressions show the dialectic (tensions) between nature versus technology. This paradigmatic case study of apps against apps gives empirical texture to a rising phenomenon that with the expansion of AI, so my speculative argument, will find even more relevance. The broader question that follows for postphenomenology is how to think the hermeneutics of apps against apps and how to conceptualize the non-use these apps promote. What do the symbols of flowers, butterflies or the crossed-out smartphones expose about our relationship to digital technologies? Through exploring questions of aesthetics and semiotics as well as American Philosopher Don Ihde’s hermeneutics, this paper seeks to work toward decoding the visual language of digital detoxing and toward a concept of mediation of non-use.