Reading the future in the cracks of your smartphone screen

21 September 2022

Cracked smartphone screen, photo by Jan Kuss

Image courtesy of Jan Kuss/(Instagram).

I wouldn’t go doing this deliberately… there must be better ways to learn what the future holds, like waiting until it happens perhaps. Nonetheless, there may be a way to glimpse your future in the cracks of a smashed smartphone screen, and it’s known as smashomancy.

A smartphone screen is, of course, a veritable semantic orchard of icons and affordances, titles and statuses and means of navigation. But to find true insight we must look beyond the legible to more uncertain and chaotic territory. True, a smartphone in its role as a nexus of communication is an endless stream of signal and noise, but that is extrinsic to its embodied self. To truly understand its meaning, we must understand its physical nature.

Your future is indeed in the palm of your hand.

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