Modern Wisdom - #010 - Kai Wei - Can More Technology Reduce Smartphone Addiction?

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

Kai Wei is the CEO of www.TheLightPhone.com I continue our journey into the world of smartphone addiction by finding out about a new piece of technology whose goal is to be used as little as possible. It may seem like Kai is running against the grain by offering a product with the aim to be absent from our lives rather than a part of them, but it kind of makes sense. Expect to learn if the problem of too much technology can be fixed with more technology, why you shouldn't ever have your phone on the table at dinner and how being bored can be the most creative time of your week. Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends. On last week's episode we discussed how people can become addicted to social media, how cognitive biases that we don't know even exist in our brains are being manipulated by almost every social media that exists and how your phone is essentially a hacker in your pocket. The feedback this week has been absolutely fantastic. I've got so many tweets and messages from people saying that they are trying to reduce their phone time your pocket. The feedback this week has been absolutely fantastic. I've got so many tweets and messages from people saying that they are trying to reduce their phone time and this has helped to open their eyes to why it's not necessarily their fault. This week I'm sitting down with Kai Wei who is the CEO of thelightphone.com and they think that they have developed a product which can

enable us to spend more time off screen. I do think that there's an important question to be asked here and it is, can we fix the problem of too much technology with more technology? That's a question you'll have to answer yourself Also, I do want to say that I was not sponsored or paid to Interview Kai and I found him off my own back because of how interested I was in the product and I wanted to hear his philosophy on it I also want to say that I'm considering buying one after my conversation with him, but that's completely independent. So here we go, Kai Wei. So Kai, welcome to Modern Wisdom. Very good to meet you.

Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for coming on, man. You are CEO of the Lightphone. That's correct. So, I got introduced to the product from a friend who just linked me to online and I had a brows around and it seemed it's a real unique device as far as I can see. For those people who think that technology is sort of moving in one direction which is more functionality, more integration with our lives and you guys have come up with a product which kind of goes in the complete opposite lives. And you guys have come up with a product

which kind of goes in the complete opposite direction. Do you think that would be fair to say? Yeah, I see a lot of press mentioned as an anti-small phone. But we always wanted to clarify that we're not anti-technology or anti-small phone, which is trying to be more human about how we approach technology, specifically the smartphone that we all have 24-7. Yeah, I understand that. So can you give us some background to yourself and how this concept came about? Yeah, of course. So my background is in design and design research.

Four years ago, five years ago, I called my job and joined this incubator that Google started in New York specifically for designers, just because they think that the hypothesis that they think designers, when they put designers on the founding table, that part that we created with empathy, can really create social impact. So we were my co-founder, Joe, and I met in the space, and we were encouraged to do mobile app, just like any other startup. Yeah. So the very soon that we realized for both of us

that creating another app is the last thing we want to do. We were doing research about how human, how people interact with smartphone, and we just kind of freak ourselves out. Like I'm sure you see this everywhere, not just in New York, in a subway, in Trent station, in airport, everyone's looking at 80% of the times looking down, it doesn't matter who are they with

or where they are. You know, just swiping away on the screen. We know that we check our phone 200 times or more than six hours a day. Is that the average figure? Yeah, that's the average figure from the research that we can find. 200 times a day and six hours a day on average. I mean, with 10 ages, even worse with social media, that there could be on their smartphone 10 hours a day, they're just not human from our perspective. We can't really stare at the screen 24-7. Well, that's crazy.

I mean, I'd seen, I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but I read a quote from an article that said something like in one week, humans get more stimulation, more visual stimulation than they would have gotten in an entire year, typically during their revolution. And you know, you are right to look at it, to step back a little bit from typical smartphone use and look at it as an alien, I suppose, looking down on Earth. You have all of the complexity and the beauty and the uniqueness of day to day life going on.

And we all spend so much time staring down at our phones. So what year was this when you first went into the project? It's in 2014. After research we started to think about how do we create something that create a physical object that could encourage and inspire more people to take a break? So can you say like we go ahead? No, no. Just can you take us through the research that you did on Interpeople's phone use?

Can you explain how that was conducted and who it was on and what it consisted of? Yeah, of course. So we basically invited random people, friends we know, and we take away the smartphone for, say, like, six hours or entire day, and we give them a flip phone at a time and ask them to spend whole day or six hours without their smartphone. And then what's interesting is that when they came back from the trip after the day, they have a common feedback that the first half hour or first hour was extremely difficult. Because you have this anxiety that you don't know what to do. There's nothing on me.

I can pull out my smartphone, I start swiping. I'm getting bored. What do I do? What do I do? Like everyone has that reaction in the first 20, 30 minutes. However, what's magical is that after you get over that formal, you know, the fear of missing out. I'll feel it. Once you get over that form or you know the fear of missing out I'll feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Once you get over to that

What's gonna happen is you you started to pay attention to To other people to the building to the cloud, you know like talk to Stranger sometimes when you're waiting for a bus or waiting for subway. It is fascinating and then They report it back. It's like, you know, I have a lady in bed saying that's the best day of her week, just because she remembers what happened during the day, like, literally. Absolutely.

I think there's definitely a parallel that is run between how much of your day has been spent on your phone and how not mindful you have been throughout the day. Not anyone who is undergoing mindfulness practice and trying to be more present. The first place to look, I think, that will be able to improve your ability to be present is to put your phone down because by its very nature, having your phone out and in your hand is not being present, you're not where you are, you're somewhere else in a virtual space. Yeah, we got a lot of feedback when we start a life phone, you know, like the most logical

common question will be, hey, why do I need life phone? I'll just turn on fly mode. I'll just leave my smartphone at home. Why do I need life phone? There are apps out there that can limit notification or turn off notification. Isn't that possibly achieved the same purpose that life phone is offering? And my answer's always be that we, I think we as human, we need object to inspire actions.

And I think that's how, it's also how religious work. You have all kinds of books and starters and makelist. It just needs something to inspire you you to encourage you to take actions. You could also say, hey, why can I use a Motorola flip phone, Nokia phone 20 years ago, my argument is, okay, so how many people like you know actually do that? Now many, it's not special, I know when we really do that because the experience of using those on vintage devices are not special. All we're trying to do is creating an object, a brand,

and a brand message to make this connecting, to make, you know, stay away from a smartphone, special. Yeah. So more willing to take a break, we're not trying to replace smartphone, saying, hey, you smartphone's bad. Don't use your smartphone at all. We're not saying that, we're just saying,

hey, it's like we have different shoes, different clothes, for different occasions. Your smartphone is great for emails, for FaceTime, your family, or gaming, or whatever you want to do, social media. But what if sometimes all you want to do is take a walk down the street, or spending hours with your family in the park, or just be creative, try to concentrate, or just sitting on a beach, watching sunset. Why do you need a mini computer with you all the time?

Yeah, I think that's a really good analogy to say about the different clothes, because you're right, we have our loadout, so to speak, to use a gaming analogy, is different based on what the situation is that we're going into. We wear different clothes and we have a different bag pack to go to the gym versus to go to the office versus to go away on holiday.

And, you know, when you're talking about a piece of technology which takes up to six hours of your day, so, you know, not far off a third of your waking life is spent on this one object, making that more appropriate for the situation, gearing that in the same way as you do your outfit and your bags and your food and everything else. You know, you are right. It does seem like an odd thing to not be doing. So let's roll back. So you've taken people's phones off them during your research. The people who have had an older phone with less functionality have noticed that they haven't improved quality in their day

was that from there on did that kind of kick off, right, we need to try and do something about this we need to try and mirror the reduction in Apps in a device or where did it go from that? Yeah, pretty much we just finding fascinating that Pretty much everyone comes back saying that's the best hour as best time they have a whole week just because just because we've been bombarded with so much information

all the time. And I think that's why we decided, hey, that's what we want to do. If you look at a current state of technology, everything that everyone else, Google, Apple, Samsung, whoever, they're all building products to move us to a more connected life. But there's no violence. No one's offering a healthy violence in a tech world to offer better option.

Why, you know, the other argument will be, why would they? None of the companies inherently believe that there is anything wrong with too much phone use, the attention economy and advertising, which is what is paving the way for most of the apps that are on the phones, advertising time. Time on screen is what these people are concerned about. So if you can make a device which goes longer and more immersively and is more seamlessly integrated with your life, that's more time on screen, that's better, right? You know, that from one side of the fence, that's the way that they're going to presume. Whereas it would appear that what people actually

value in terms of what they consider to be time well spent is time off-screen. Yeah, I think that's exactly what in my opinion, that's a huge, it's almost a crisis of human being. We are so blindly willing to give up what we have in front of us, give up our thoughts, give up boredom that boredom is supposed to be feeling bored, is how you be creative, how you look into yourself and start a conversation with yourself. But right now, because of attention business, because of all the business model in the app,

not smartphone, app. All the business model in your app is trying to in the app, not smartphone, app. All of this is modeling an app. It's trying to grab your attention, grab your time so they can make money out of it. They could either put in more advertisement or lure you to subscribe service. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how company work.

But the problem is, when everything's doing that, your device is just, it's not, it's putting ourselves in this advantage. Absolutely. As a human. Absolutely. I think we are vulnerable. And I think one of the big, one of the big things I listened to, what kind of got me on to this, this topic specifically was a podcast that Tristan Harris from time while spent, did with Sam Harris halfway through last year. And I know that that was really eye opening for a lot of people. And for me to see that and to look at the persuasive techniques that are being used by app developers.

And the companies that are behind some of the most highly used and highly engaged social media sites in the world, it feels, it does feel like you're being tricked. I know that it's not that there's some evil cabal of people in hooded robes sat behind, you know, in some dark dungeon somewhere. That's not the way it is, but it kind of, it kind of does feel a little bit like that. You know, as a user, you, you kind of this rat in a maze getting, getting forced around this app loop and, you know, you, before you know it, you've spent 45 minutes in bed on a morning and you're late to make breakfast and you, you, you late to go and, and do the things that you actually wanted to do with your day because you've been stuck in a loop.

Yeah, and as a designers like when you know when we design app, if we were to design app, you always want to make sure like every step the way it's enticing, you create this page the next page, that all makes sense, all interesting. So people spend more time on your app that follows through complete your process. You know, as a designer, that's how we design, if we are designing app, that's how we design app. And that's how this is modeled in the app, benefit from it too. Absolutely. We're just so vulnerable as human that I think With life on that we wanted to also know start a conversation of you know, why can we have different options?

right why can why can we? Up out of smartphone. It just you know use something else So that we won't be hijacked. We're using something that actually designed to respect us. It's not designed to grab your time, attention, or make you spend more money on it. They just want to sell you something. What can we design something beautiful in that respect respect human time. Yeah, I think what's interesting is that there's kind of two sides to looking at this, or three sides should I say, to looking at this problem as far as I can see. One of them is what Tristan Harris appears to be focusing a lot of his time on, which is coming out from an ethical design perspective. So he's trying to have a change in the culture on a designer's side so that

they're thinking about what they're doing with the apps. I think on another side, there is tactics that normal people and normal smartphone users can use in terms of reducing their time on screen or improving the quality of their time on screen. And then there appears to be a third side of that, which is looking at solutions to the smartphone you to smartphone use overall. And I think that to me that appears to be where the light fun fits in. is to be where the life on fits in. Yeah, I mean, I think Tristan's approach is very interesting. And then it might be able to create a long-term impact. But in my opinion, it's the business model that drove the dictateness of our app.

It's not a designer. If business model is not trying to force you to spend more time, enticing you to spend more time, they make money. Designer won't do that because they won't usually design it as following what's happening with policy and they're usually not the one making the final decision. So you're saying that for as long as the attention economy is driving revenue through time on screen, the app developers are going to continue to do that. So all they're doing is meeting a brief, right?

Yeah, and you also have an app. You just would think they're ecosystem, a smartphone app. It will be, so this is psychology study that we learn that only the presence, just the presence of your smartphone on the table, changed our conversation. You and me, if I'm sitting right across you and I have my phone out, that changed our conversation because we both expect our conversation will, will be interrupted. We will pick up our phone and text and look at you and talk in the same time. We will look at the notification.

But I think just the presence of your smartphone really changed our behavior. That's so interesting. Yeah, it's crazy how smartphone immersing to our daily life and it's also fascinating how we are not fighting back. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I think what's really interesting is you've said there, having a smartphone out on the table, you're not the first person who cited this actually, use if one of the co-hosts mentioned this on a previous podcast. It's really funny that you've both come up with the same story, but it's really interesting. Smartphone is such ubiquitous part of our lives, but yet in the same

sentence, having it out changes our behavior. So that shows that although it's accepted, it's not natural. If it was natural, it wouldn't make any difference, but it's not. It's, it is an impingement. It is a restriction on our time and on our normal discourse. Yeah, because this is so addictive, like you, you can't, we all have this nervous habit to just check it every couple of minutes, every couple of seconds. It just, but extremely powerful over, I'll have so much power over us. Yeah, we just don't, we just feel like we need to do something else to help out. I agree, man. I agree indeed. But yeah, like you say, the Tristan's approach

from time while spent in the center of human technology, both of those checked them out if you're listening and the links will be in the description below. Those are important systemic changes, but they're a cultural change. And I do think that that's going to come about through understanding through disseminating information. And you know, you are right that the economy at the moment is driving people in that direction. So it's not, it's not a fix fix which can be reached very quickly. I don't think that it's the sort of solution which is going to manifest itself or it's destination should I say which is going to be reached very quickly. Yeah, I mean I obviously wish that I could bring like immediately in Paris as well. I think we as human we need to fight back.

With the life form, I think our philosophy, when we started designing it and creating a vision, we don't really see life form as a solution to smartphone addiction. The life form to us, it's actually, it's a question that we want to post to our users. What is the question? The question is, when you go out with life form, you have no smartphone, you have no social media, no game, no message, no notification. What are you going to do? What's important in your life?

What are you going to think about? Who are you going to talk to? When you get bored, what's essential to you? I think all this profound question that we right now, especially nowadays, that we have smartphone hours all the time, you just take it out and spending time on it. We forget to do all that. That's so important to us as human, to really have time, create environment, creating the time for us to have a conversation with ourselves. I think having a conversation with yourself is such a really important message.

We were discussing in Lifehacks 101, one of the podcasts that we recorded not so long ago. We discussed that during meditation and mindfulness practice, a lot of the time when you quietened down the mind, you end up having thoughts and ideas that come to you and they never come to you at any of the time of the day. And that's absolutely due to the fact that you do not have this distraction, this barrage of stimulus that's taking you away from being with your thoughts and taking you into a world that you've seen a million times before. The images are different and maybe the text is different, but the experience is the same, do you know I mean?

Yeah, that's what makes us human. We just, we can't forget about it. That's why we're human. We're not AI, we're not, you know, machine. I think we ask ourselves stupid question. We ask ourselves silly questions. We get bored. We get anxious, we get, it's just, yeah. That's so important to humanity. So actually, we, you know, it's being three years since we started a life phone, we have 10,000

users around the globe. And now we're asking ourselves, how do we encourage people to go light more often, go light meaning leave your smartphone home and go out? How do we do that more often? How do we stay away from smartphone? Yeah. So we've danced around it. Can you take us through what the light phone is from bottom to top?

Yeah, so technically, light phone is a critical size mobile phone that only makes and receive phone calls. There's nothing else on it. No messaging, no notification, no internet, no social media. So how it works is that you basically pair a light phone with your smartphone. And when you want to use a light phone, you can turn it on a light phone, front of your smartphone, leave your smartphone behind, and go out without all the distraction and noise. So you are able to enjoy the moment and be more

present. But when someone calls you on your smartphone, the call will get forwarded to your live phone. So your warmness, important cause. But but it means I just know distraction or noise Right, I understand so I've done a little bit of a little bit of reading and had a look around Am I right in thinking that you're allowed to call nine people? Is that right? Yeah, we allow user to Saves up to nine speed dials our life save up to nine speed dials. So you've got the one to nine and the keypad and you can call the one through nine as outgoing calls. Yes, that's the initial intention. The reason that we make that design choices is are doing research. When we ask people to go out with, you know,

this is smartphone behind and go out with the flip phone or old mobile phone, we also will ask our participant to write down the numbers they need for the day. And no one has more than six. No one has more number than one or more than six. No one has it. Why do we have 1000 count out now from? Yeah. And that's why we make that decision. Yes. So right. You are so right. I think the top probably of the top 20 people that you call the would be or if you're entire phone book, you're right. The 95% of the people that you're going to call most regularly are going to be a very

small number of phone numbers. And some of those are probably going to be paid to deliveries and takeaways and stuff like that. So, okay, so I'm writing saying that you keep your own number as well, right? So it's not a separate phone. It's kind of like an extension of your existing phone. So it's not a separate phone. It's kind of like an extension of your existing phone. Yeah, we, we offer that call, call masking feature in US only. So in US, when you get a live phone, you could, you know, pair your life phone with your smartphone.

And, and the life phone will basically use your smartphone number. So when you make phone calls on life phone, it will still shows up as you're, you know, it's you not a different number. Yeah. Okay. So what is the rollout at the moment of light phone? Where is it available and where is it functioning? Yeah, we, we ship internationally and at the moment, I think we shipped roughly 10,000 plus life

phones to 50 different countries. Wow. And it is amazingly like we we learned this problem is so universal. It was not just US or UK. it's like everywhere, especially Asia countries too. Okay. We were in Hong Kong airport, when we, you know, meeting, when to Hong Kong to meet suppliers, we saw the stickers everywhere in the airport that asked people to look up

because it's become safety issues everywhere in the airport. And people just like staring at the phone, bumping to each other. Well, it's such a big issue. People looking at their phones, that it's an actual safety hazard. It's been classed as a safety hazard that people aren't looking up as opposed to looking down. Yeah, it's very quickly. It's crazy.

Let's see, okay, we all have so much in light in our life, my friends, family, like trees, clouds, buildings, architecture, it's beautiful, a store, but we just will and we give those all up. You're really right. I think something that one of my work colleagues said to me about a year ago on a similar subject and he asked, what was the last three things that you liked on any social media? And if the listeners can try and do that, unless they've got the phone in front of them now, if you can try and think about the last three things that you clicked like on on Instagram or Facebook, I have absolutely no idea. You know, those things were so worthy of my time that I sacrificed some of my life to

go on to this device and look at them and then give a judgment of positivity in response to it, and yet upon being asked to recall it 20 minutes later, I can't even tell you what it was. Yeah, we just think so quickly. We don't really spend time digesting. You just put the thrill, you have so much information all the time. You're right. Yeah, it's almost such an information overload as people go through the phone that the depth of interaction has to be by very nature shallow in order to fit the breadth of consumption in? Do you think that's fair to say? Totally. And I also think it's because it's easy. We always, we, you know, we human, we always want, we lazy, we want easy way out.

That's why you have smartphone. But when you feel challenged, when you feel awkward, when you feel bored, you have a way out, same thing with social media, same thing with anything. When you have a difficult thought, you just want to, you know, instead of like really diving to it, really like think about it, you just can blindly consuming information without even thinking about it. The boredom things are really interesting one as well. I'd seen a study online that said something like more than 60% of people admit to using their phone on the toilet.

And I honestly saw that and thought, is it only 60%? Like I don't know anyone, I don't know anybody that goes to the bathroom and doesn't take their mobile phone with them. Like, you know, and that bathroom thing is such a big deal. Like, you know, that's the one time where you probably can afford to be alone with your thoughts. And we're, you know, we're having a swipe through Instagram and we're doing all bits and pieces like that.

You think, well, yeah, the boredom is part and parcel and the silence is part and parcel as well. And I think that the rates of anxiety, mental health and suicide is the number one killer of men in the UK under the age of 40, you know, rates of anxiety. It's mental health week this week, actually, in the UK. And in a society where we're trying to reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and I'm going to guess that there will be some studies that I'm not aware of. Is smartphone use, has smartphone use been scientifically linked with anxiety and depression yet, or are you aware of it, if it has? I am not, but we always believe that being more connected will make us any happier. Looking at people's feet will make you happy.

It's just going to make you more anxious. You're going to compare it. And for teenagers, for young people, that didn't really realize that social media or internet is just one side of just one small angle of this person's life. Like you see, you see like, oh, I'm always partnering on my Facebook, I'm always out traveling on my Facebook or Twitter or social media, but that's not real life. That's just a reflection of one angle of this person's life. We see as human. We always want to show the positive side. We always want to show that we're laughing, we're having fun. No one's hosting our Facebook saying,

I am my boyfriend just dump me on my girlfriend's dump. I had a really, I had, or even on the other end of the scale, like, you know, at least at least that's interesting. No one that is going on and saying nothing really happened today today was a little bit dull. I think, you know, it's not, it's not newsworthy, is it? But there's a really good quote that I read and I reiterated this on a recent podcast that said, social media shows you the best of everybody else's lives whilst you view the worst of your own and you compare it to the worst of your own. It's the best of everyone else and No, it's not at all man. So going back to the light phone I think what was what's interesting is there's a couple of big podcasters that some of my friends

follow who do either a phone free afternoon or they have actually created a rudimentary version of what the light fund does by getting like a old, you know, a pay as you go, the 10 pound Nokia phone, and they've tried to cobble together a solution like this. And a couple of the issues that those guys have come up against. So one of them, the problem with not having a phone on you at all is that I think there's definitely a level of safety of knowing that you've got your phone with you. Like, you know, there may be an emergency either you needing to contact someone or someone

needing to contact you. So I think going completely phone free holds so much anxiety for some people that whatever level of freedom they would gain by not having their smartphone would be nullified and then probably actually even made worse by shitting their pants that something bad had gone wrong and that they weren't able to be contacted or that they couldn't contact someone. So I think going completely phone free because phone free isn't the issue, is it? The phone isn't the issue.

It's the overuse and it's the immersion in apps. That's the issue. The phone is just a tool. It's supposed to be a tool. It's not entertaining social media device. It's a tool that you use to talk to people, to communicate with people. That's what I want to do. You are exactly right. That go completely hungry. It's dangerous because

what if you want to run to something that you need to call people? What if it's some emergency happen? Life on to us, our thought is creating a piece of mine when you go out without smartphone. So, you know, almost knowing that, hey, I could call my family if I need to. My friends can't reach out to me if they want to, but other than that, nothing else. I was just recently had a conversation with a woman in our working space and she was telling me that life phone is like a quarter. I'm not sure it's in UK. It's called quarter. The quarter is a 25 cents coin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like a quarter in the old days. I was like, why is it like a quarter? And she was like, because you know, in the old days without smartphone, you always want to have a quarter

on you so you can use the paper phone. Just in case you need to make it. Yeah, that's such a good analogy. Yeah. There's a piece of money, huh? That really is. And then I think it's so the second, let's say the second solution that a couple of people come up with was to get like a, you know, like you did with the during your study, you gave people like an old flip phone, but I think another one of the issues is when you're asking people to make a lifestyle change like this, it needs to be as convenient as possible. It has to stack the deck in the favor of doing the thing that you want them to do. And obviously, if you, one of my friends tried to do this in the UK, and he got a £10 pays you go phone, then realized that because he's got a micro sim from an iPhone, he then has to go and buy an adapter to make the micro sim into a

normal size sim so that he can fit that into the phone. And that means like taking his iPhone apart every time he wants to do it, taking the back off this old phone, taking the battery out, you know, fitting it into the new like micro sim adapter and putting it in and you just think, well, I'm not surprised that he only stuck up with it for like one day a week for three weeks because I couldn't be bothered to do that. It's not convenient. And the thing is that the disparity between moving from a situation of such hyper convenience with Google Maps and Wikipedia and Google on a device to think, right, not only have I got to give this up,

but I've got to get through all of these really shitty hurdles, fiddly hurdles to give myself less functionality. It doesn't surprise me that that wasn't a very successful approach. Yeah, like I said, it's not special enough for you to actually want to do it. I mean, to successfully encourage people to stay away from smartphone. I mean, I think that's why we create a life on. It's well designed, it's beautiful. So you might, you know, for people that have never

thought about going out with a smartphone. My, it might get intrigued and say, hey, this thing was cool. I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. Yeah, for sure. It looks aesthetically the smartphone looks really, really cool. It's just a little bit bigger than a credit card, right? Yeah, it's a credit card size and it's a bit thicker than the actual credit card.

It's easy for you to put in a wallet, just pocket. So you don't actually feel it's on you. So that's the purpose. When we design a iPhone, try to decide what's the phone factor. We try to think about what does that think? What is the thing that we always have on us, but we don't really notice that we have them. It's a credit card, it's your idea.

Yeah. So that's why we make the design position. You've much the phone with something that already exists, which is the credit card. I think it was interesting what you said at the very start about it needing to be something that was beautiful, that is kind of a little bit like planting a flag in the ground, so to speak, it's making a mark and it's you you're attaching, you're attaching your

desire to go phone free and to do less tech usage to something which you can almost feel proud of a little bit. You have something and you feel proud of it and you think, oh, this is a physical representation, a manifestation of my desire to better myself and to be more present. Yeah, I feel, I mean, it's reflected on our users as well. I feel really proud or honored that a lot of our customers who bought a light phone, they share it. It's almost, they share the moment when they get light phone and they just feel proud obviously sharing on social media is kind of ironic. But you can see, you can see that the proud that they want to share that, hey, I decide to do something. I make this choice.

I'm going to lift this life from time to time. I'm going to use my life form on time to time, call me if you need me. Like, we see that happening. A lot of social media people sharing life form with their friends. It's just fascinating to me. Like, it's almost become a lifestyle

simple, I want to say, and we just feel really great. And through that, I think what we want to do is just to encourage more people to try to do that, to try to stay away from smartphone, which we never do. No one does that. So we want to just hopefully inspire more people globally to try different solutions, different shoes, different clothes, why not? Yeah, I think the different shoes and different outfits and analogies, the best one that I've heard so far, I think that what was interesting is, you know, that there's an argument to be made that fixing the problem of too much technology with more technology seems a little bit

circular. But that's like saying that there is a problem with riding a bike so why buy a car or why have a pair of walking shoes. It's the same. Yeah, it's within the same realm, but it's a different route to meeting a similar goal. I mean, we, like, different shoes, different clothes. It's how we always say it. We always, you know, like, if you compare life on to your smartphone, smartphone, it's like toolbox.

Again, it's all kinds of tools. Like, it's thousands of tools you don't need. Yeah. And life on is a screwdriver. Yeah. Cool. So you could choose what do you need. We can choose what technology we need

in a specific condition, a situation. We don't have to take it all in. We need to make a conscious choice. But right now, there's no choice. It's all smartphone. Everyone's making a smartphone. Everyone's having smartphone, 24.7. It's the last thing you see when you go to bed.

If this is not a, what's what what is it? I think that's I think that's a really good point to be made that it is you're right. It's the last thing that we look at before we go to bed. It's the first thing that we look at in the morning. It's there. There was there was a video that got put up the other day of a girl's 21st birthday and it was a snap chat of her birthday cake coming over to her in a nightclub and as this cake come along and obviously someone spent a lot of time making this cake and organising this big procession to arrive

with her and the camera pans around to her sat on this table and she's watching her own 21st birthday cake arrive through the lens of her phone because she's so desperate to get the Instagram story to put up about that and you think, we've all been there, like we've all done something, you know, videoing a gig or a videoing a concert or, you know or something beautiful that was happening, but who's it for? Because the memory of that happening for you will be much more valuable than the video that gets shown to your friends. I know. It's like you've got to counsel everyone's putting a phone up, recording and blocking your view. I mean, every time I have that, God, I was like, oh, God, watch the counsel.

Yeah, there's a really funny meme that I saw that was floating around on the internet and it said, something like, I was sat down on the subway looking at the man across from me and he didn't have his phone out. He wasn't sat there texting or swiping through Instagram. He just sat there looking out of the window like a psychopath. Anything you could like. It's such a comment on modern society that that's the weird thing to do. Yeah, they remind me of a story. Yeah, it's a story. So, so, me and my co-founder, we a couple of years ago, we were in San Francisco doing this, you know, retail, relationship things. But anyway, we were in line, in front of a restaurant, and in the line from us is a dad and his daughter and his daughter just you know keep shouting and screaming saying I don't want to be here

this is bored I'm bored I'm bored I don't want to be here so typically you will expect and you know you're that just like give her a smartphone, you've heard I'd have something to take her attention away. But he didn't do that. He sat her down and actually say that, hey, we talk about this, boredom is the chance to learn. I was like, what? What?

Wow. I need a video tape, this is so good. Yeah. Expect him to say anything like that, but like, wow, I need to give you a life on right now. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that man's daughter has got a good chance of growing up to be a very mindful

and well-balanced human being who's going to be able to deal with awkwardness. She's going to be able to deal with her emotions coming to the forefront with sadness and it's not going to need numbing or hiding away by getting behind a phone. So, like phone at the moment, I'm writing saying that you guys raised quite a lot of money on Kickstarter projects, right? Yeah, we so three years ago we raised 400,000 Kickstarter and then we go on Raced another three million from private investor

Just you Yeah, building a phone from scratch like from two individual, it's just not easy. We're not all. I can't imagine it's a small undertaking. So three and a half million dollars. Yeah, pretty much went into it. And especially with both our design backgrounds, we want to make sure like from packaging, from the phone itself, from a cable, it's all, you know, designed, made well because it's an exploration. It can be a shitty, cheap, alternative options, like, it's a storyaway, a burner phone. It can be, it has to be beautiful, it has to be, expiring the packaging, too. We are not sure if it's started packaging.

Now it's a book. Yeah, we have seen it. If anyone hasn't, if you see it online, it's absolutely beautiful. We wanted to tell people that when you get a live phone, you get impression that it's not about feature, not about screen size. It's about the little moment of your life

that if you put on a smartphone that you will notice, you know, like a picture of a bird flying through a top of tree, a picture of old men sitting on the beach, you know, we want to tell people, hey, life phone is not about phone. Obviously we're selling a phone, but it's not about the phone. It's about the value is the value of life phone is leave your smartphone behind, go out enjoy your day enjoy your time like you know enjoy time when it passed through like just don't don't occupy yourself, you're fast with with fees. Yeah for sure it's weird isn't it

because the the light phone could probably be replaced with the life phone, you know, you You're allowed you're allowing yourself to have life as opposed to a phone so Where where where is the so the phones functional like fully functional with the call forwarding in everything in the US? Am I right? Is what about Canada? What about Europe? What's the what's the plans moving forward to make this? More accessible for for people in other countries? Well, we actually 50% of our customers are from international users. I also for international users you can still do core forwarding. The only issue, the problem that the only thing that you don't have

as an international user is that we won't be able to ask your life phone number. So you will essentially have two different numbers. Okay, but people, people when they call in, it'll forward on to the light phone. So that kind of doesn't matter. And then on the outgoing calls, there's only maybe nine people that need to have your second number in any case, right? Yeah, and then we were like, we were worried that this will be a stop international customer from buying a platform or using a platform. But to my surprise, it's not really changing the decisions.

So like I said, 50% of the customers are from UK, EU, Asia, different countries too. It's really amazing. I think that a lot of people have identified that time away, time off screen, even if they haven't looked into this. And I'm talking like normal, everyday person on the street hasn't delved down the rabbit hole of persuasive, of cognitive biases and persuasive techniques and you know, time on screen reduction and all that. The normal person, I think, appreciates that they're using their phone too much. What's natural is, you know, there's only really

two options. It's either go form free or kind of get a burner phone and neither of those are tremendously attractive. So when the only hurdle that you do need to overcome is to have a second number, to me, that doesn't feel like a tremendously big, a tremendously big problem, because you were, at the very least, you were going to have to have a second number anyway for the, the players you go Nokia 2310, that you were going to look to use as a replacement. Yeah, it goes to potentially get the dual SIM card. Dual SIM card with the same number. I think I believe Voda from or other carrier in Europe does offer that. So Chris, I'll feel bad if I didn't mention it.

We are actually launching live phone 2 today. No way! Yeah, today on Indiegogo, the thought is being 10,000 phones and three and a half years. Like I said, we keep asking ourselves, how do I make it? How do we encourage people to go light longer, to go light for good, you know, not a pair secondary device, but how do we do something that encourage allow more people to go light for good? That's fascinating. So come on, tell us what light phone to, tell us what light phone to, I, I, I, that's you, no, I hear that this is happening.

Yeah. So if I use a San analogy that smartphone is a toolbox, life phone one is a screwdriver, life phone two is a Swiss army knife tool. Okay. So the life phone two, I'll go, there's two position that is your primary phone. It's not a second phone that you pair with smartphone. We want it, we want to have this device to potentially replace your smartphone. It's a 4G query for us. It's phone, the same phone factor. We add E-Yink as the display. And we like a candle, right? Yes, like a candle, black and white, beautiful UI, simple UI. We add messaging to the second generation.

We're also potentially adding the ability to call Uber and alarm clock direction, but that's it. We're not going to be going, we're not going to become smartphone to us. It's a Swiss Army knife phone that I think a lot of people, global, globally, are ready to make this switch. So are you, when you say messaging, are you talking SMS? Yes, SMS. Okay. So do you see smartphone 2 as being a replacement for smartphone 1, or do you see it as being an alternative like you'd have a different scales of a car and a scooter, they perform the same task, but people don't necessarily, some people will want one and some people will want another. Yeah, exactly.

We're not replacing like phone one. We just, you know, just because we got a lot of customer email, you're saying, hey, I love like phone one. But can you just add text message? I want to use like phone all the time, but without text message or direction or ability to call a taxi, I can, you know, go lie all the time, I can use it in a daily tool. And that's exactly how it position life from one. Life from one is a take a break from it's a vacation phone.

It's a phone you use when you're sitting on a beach watching sunset. We live on two, we want to create a different option. For those people that are ready to give us a smartphone, give up being a slave of technology. This is an option. It's not O-Score, Nokia, O-Score, Motorola. It's being displayed, choreclicized, with all the essential tools that you need in your daily life. Yeah. Do you think that you guys are at risk of receiving criticism from people who think that it's just a nefarious route to try and sell another piece of technology to people? Maybe, but we actually, when we start a know, we, when we start a life on

two, we actually did a survey asking our customer, hey, do you think you will be, you know, hypocrites of us to try and do to switch army knife to or and 80% of customers saying no, because they believe that adding, adding more features and allow them to stay away from the smartphone longer with our social media, with our internet, with all the distractions. It's actually pretty appealing to them. So the extra features in that are positive. Yeah, it's essential to, I guess, that we're not trying to become a smartphone. All I want to do is to invite more people to stay away from the sun, from this mini computer

we have with us 24-7. We don't need that. We have our iPad, we have our desktop. With iPhone 2, you could basically do anything else on your left-hand iPad. And you have your iPhone 2 for course, messaging, calling taxi, alarm clock. That's it. Yeah, I understand completely. I think it's been an absolutely fascinating chat, Kai. Would you be able to explain where everyone can find you? So the original light phone, where the campaign for the new ones going to be and how they can contact

you online? Yeah, if you could check out lifephone2.com, that's where our campaign is and you can find our website through the campaign as well. I'm happy to answer any questions from your listeners. My email is kiway at the likephone.com. KDIW, the like on the com. Fantastic. Kai, I really, really appreciate your time, man. Am I writing thinking, are you guys in stock for the like phone one at the moment? are you waiting on a new batch to be delivered for shipping? Yeah, we actually sold out our Lightform 1.

We have no inventory left at the moment. So we've been taking reservations for Lightform 1 at the moment, and we're also taking reservation on Lightform 2 at thelifetime2.com. Amazing. Thank you very much for your time Kai. I really appreciate that. Links to everything will be below in the description. Good luck with your Indiegogo campaign. I really do think that what you're doing is born of a place of goodwill.

I know that there is a criticism to be made fixing too much tech with more tech is not a solution but I don't think that I don't think that you guys are trying to achieve a money making, obviously it needs to be a commercially viable business, but I don't think that you guys are aiming to do this from a place of bad faith. I think that it is genuinely something that's born of the desire to make people's lives more livable. And I think it's a very noble pursuit and I think that I hope that you do very, very well with it in the future. I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you.

Thank you very much, man. Thanks for chatting. Oh, yeah, I'm fed.