I am possessed. How I became a slave to my new iPhone

A cry from the heart. A short while ago, I was a reasonably functioning human being, capable of independent thought and action.. then I acquired my new iPhone. It replaced my ancient model, which was showing all the functions of a deteriorating piece of hardware. After great hesitation, I plunged into buying the Apple 15 phone, allegedly the much improved version of my existing product.

Easy-peasy?

The transfer was easy-peasy, or so, my fellow members of the Apple cult assured me. Unassured, I took their advice …

I will spare you details of the purchase and transfer of vital information from my old phone.
I now realise I have fallen into a diabolical plot, which renders me helpless against the forces that have ruined my life.
At first, I marvelled at the beauty and enhanced facilities provided by my new phone. But very shortly I became disillusioned.

Too many options
The trap revealed itself after I discovered the world behind the multicoloured Fitness icon.
A touch, and ‘open sesame’ I was through into the dazzling world of health and fitness.
A dazzling array of possibilities opened up before my eyes.
Activity
Active energy
Resting energy
Steps walking and running distance
Double support time,
Walking asymmetry
Walking speed
Walking step length
Flights climbed …

Each possibility had an explanation. Active energy was explained as visualised through an activity ring. a bright red circle which demonstrated a gap between the movements I had made during the day and the movements recommended by the phone for the recommended number of active calories burned.
I will return to the ring activities later. I believe them now to be the most dangerous form of domination by the devilish Demon in the machine.
Resting energy, I am informed is an estimate of the energy used while minimally active,
additional physical activity requires more energy over and above my new enemy active energy.
Then comes some familiar measurements.
Steps. The digital activity tracker counts steps as you go about your daily chores.
Walking and running distance. Another familiar measure. This phone also provides evidence through comparisons of distance averages for the week months and even a year.

A dangerous path

All well and good, before I realised the dangerous path I was taking.

I learn next about double-support time. it is the percentage of time when both feet are on the ground during a typical walk. This measure will fall between 20 and 40% walking require strength and coordination. Changes in these can affect your balance and 2 foot contact time

Walking asymmetry.
This is accompanied by a graph. Walking asymmetry is the percentage of time on the floor measured for each foot. Are you spending more time with one for over the other?

For about a week, my walking asymmetry seem to be very low, far less than 10%

My first shock
Then my first shock. Today, my walking asymmetry has shot up to a massive 35%. Had I suddenly acquired a very serious limp?I didn’t think so…

A few hours later.
One small respite, the daily asymmetry has dropped to 20%. I am still worried.

Then,
delving deeper, I find the astonishing peak is all during my morning visit to the gym, and within it a mere three minutes on the stairs machine. The machine is no doubt accurate in its diabolic measures.

Incidentally this does not figure on my stairs -climbed record.

Other measures included, are

walking speed,

step length, and

flights climbed.
As I don’t expect to change my walking speed or step length without getting very high heels, I turn to flights climbed.

Nothing to do with airplane take offs. It’s how many flights of stairs the programme has deduced that I’ve gone up.
This has been under one a week, a deliberate health measure conducted on the approach to Cheadle railway station once a week, except for inclement conditions.
The programme does set me a target number of flights, but I accept I will struggle, partly because I have no flights of stairs at home.

A painful conclusion

I arrive at a painful conclusion. I have started checking my phone for the health details every time I use it. And I use it too often to count. I am in the grip of a compulsion. Yes, of my own making, but like gambling or drinking, awareness is step one along the painful road back to self control.

The unclosed ring

The most compulsive element is the unclosed ring, urging me to make more steps to achieve closure. I see but remain helpless. It is the need psychological urge for closure which lies at the heart of creativity and the drive to completion. The drive to find out who done it in detective stories, or the answer to a crossword clue. Add to that, finding the right move in a chess game or puzzle.

I am lost

So I am lost. Worse, the computer can set me even sterner challenges to close the daily ring of shame.
There is even a more deadly button I am resisting. It is to share my results with my friends. Now I see who among them has already been sucked into the next circle of hell. Why they tell each other on meeting how many steps they’ve made. Beyond my puny 6000 steps. Even beyond the mythical 10,000 steps, unaware of the wheels beyond wheels of the hell into which they have descended.

iPhone slaves unite

I can only cry into the abyss, iPhone slaves unite. Take one small step at a time towards normality. Ignore the inner urges to beat yesterday’s steps. You have nothing to lose but your addiction.

The God particle and beyond. A tribute to Peter Higgs

The death of Peter Higgs on Tuesday 9 April, 2024, gave rise to attempts to explain his contribution to our understanding of the nature of the fundamental forces of the Universe. The eulogies affirm his status of a giant in the field. The attempts to explain that contribution to the layman have faced considerable difficulties.

I have tried to explain the limits to current understanding, and the need to rethink our deeplyheld assumptions about reality.

I write as one such layman, albeit it one with a PhD in radiation chemistry. In some mitigation, the entire theory of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe has changed dramatically by the work of theoretical and experimental physicists over the last fifty years. I can do no more than to outline how commentators have grappled with communicating the work which earned Peter Higgs his Nobel Prize in 2013. His ideas transformed thinking about how particles acquire mass.

I remembered a popularisation of the subject by Leon Lederman, a contemporary Nobel laureate in the same area of research, Leon Lederman. In his book coauthored by science writer Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? he claims he gave the Higgs Boson the lighthearted label of The god particle because
QUOTE This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle partly because the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. END QUOTE

Then the Guardian published an obituary for Peter Higgs, on Wednesday 10 April. It gave the expected life story for ann obituary. However, understandably, it offered little insight into that Goddamned particle.
It quoted his Nobel Prize commendation describing how QUOTE the standard model of physics rests on the existence of a special kind of particle the Higgs particle which originates from an invisible field that fills up all space without it we would not exist because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass. The theory proposed by by Englert and Higgs describes this process END QUOTE.

Confused? I was. The following day, the Guardian published a second obituary. This was by Francis Close, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and a hugely experienced scientist including time at CERN where the experiments confirming the Higgs’ Boson theory was carried out.

The Professor adds rather more to this reader’s understanding of Peter Higgs and his discovery.
QUOTE The so-called Higgs mechanism controls the rate of thermal nuclear fusion that powers the Sun … The voracity of the mechanism was proved with the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson.
Higgs had justifiable claims because he drew attention to the fact that in certain circumstances the so-called mathematical symmetries required for the standard scientific theory of physics appear to be broken. Furthermore he saw the implication of such proposed behaviours could imply the appearance of a massive particle who is affinity for interacting with all other particles would be in proportion to their masses..END QUOTE

For me, this description adds considerably to the earlier obituary. It suggests in a complicated way the clarification of the great discovery for which Peter Higgs received his Nobel prize.
I returned to other sources of information to help me further in my search for understanding. I began with another book by a distinguished physicist. The author is Carlo Rovelli, and his book is called ‘Reality is not what it seems’.

I have no doubt I need to study Rovelli more carefully even to understand Rovelli. His book takes us beyond even the obituaries in explaining the Higgs mechanism. In the concluding part of the book on quantum space and relational time he points to the difficulties faced in understanding such matters.
“To comprehend what quantum space and quantum time are, we need one more to revise in depth the way we conceive things. We need to rethink the grammar of our understanding of the world.”
And that is where my journey and our journey together have reached at present. To understand more about the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs Boson requires that rethinking of our understanding of the world. I have had a glimpse of the next steps needed to make progress in that understanding.
I hope it has been as useful an exercise to others as it has been to myself.