Rhodri Marsden: "The NoPhone is funny but let's say 'bah humbug' to anti-smartphone grouches"

A few weeks ago I was looking at my phone while walking down Bleecker Street in Manhattan. Not being that familiar with New York, I was checking where I was heading using an online map when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some graffiti on the pavement. "Fuck your phone," it screeched. "Keep your head up".

I paused for a second. I was effectively being told off for anti-social behaviour by someone who'd gone around spraying pavements with an aerosol. With no paper map to hand, I had no choice but to continue looking at my phone, remaining a persistent menace to everyone around me.

In fact, people didn't seem to mind. No one looked at me as if I was spitting in the gutter or hurling abuse at cyclists. But there's a small but vocal anti-smartphone movement who believe that those of us who choose to look at screens in public (or even in private) are living our lives wrongly and failing to experience the wonders of the 21st century with sufficient intensity. Bands instruct people not to use them at gigs, posh clubs frown upon them, certain establishments make you lock them away in special cases, New York graffiti artists object to you glancing at them on the pavement. There's no question that phones can be used in ways that are socially objectionable, but for some people they're inherently bad, their usage actively damaging to humanity.

By Christmas, 915 people who helped to crowdfund an anti-gadget called the NoPhone will receive their functionless lumps of 3D-printed plastic in the post. The same size and shape as an iPhone 5 but with no functionality whatsoever, it was intended as part joke, part art project, part social statement. It encourages us to combat the troubling slide towards phone addiction by carrying around this dumb object instead, giving us the chance to experience "direct eye contact and improved conversational skills". It's provoked much comment since it was funded back in October, partly because it's funny (there's a three-second demonstration video in which nothing happens) but more because people like to boast of their rich, smartphone-lite existence, one that's supposedly more fulfilling and more worthy, even though these things are unmeasurable and they couldn't possibly know.

The NoPhone's creators inform us that smartphones are "ruining dates… disrupting you at movie theatres… clogging up pavements." Yes, a tiny proportion of dates might have ended with someone snapping at the other to put their phone away, but how many millions of dates have been arranged using the same device? How many cinema tickets have been bought, or appointments arrived at on time, thanks to handheld technology? The truth is that the social ills that angry people attribute to smartphones are scarcely measurable in comparison to the social benefits. Some of us want to be informed, to listen to music, to find out if our friends are nearby, to assess whether we're nearly at the end of Bleecker Street or not.

Anyone who accuses all phone-clutchers of failing to live in the moment is no different, really, to those who once wished that radios, televisions, computers and gaming consoles would burn in hellfire. Anyway, it's likely that some of these NoPhones will be given as passive aggressive gifts this Christmas. If you happen to receive one, please make an opposing artistic statement by taking a photo of it immediately and posting it, geotagged, across multiple social media platforms.

Twitter.com/rhodri