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* * * France isn’t the first killjoy to quit the smartphone party. In 2015  the Canadian artist Garnet Hertz invented a cheeky device called “Phonesafe ” a masochistic lockbox designed to incarcerate smartphones for a set period of time. Hertz meant Phonesafe as a provocation  but the same idea quickly became a product. Today  you can buy similar  but mass-produced  containers on Amazon  and multi-phone lockers have become a mainstay in corporate offices and schools around the world. A McDonald’s in Singapore has even installed a locker designed to promote “family togetherness” and face-to-face conversation. If you attend a Guns n’ Roses concert or a comedy performance by Dave Chappelle  ushers will require you to lock your device in a neoprene pouch and take it into the show in that state.  The phone-locking pouch  made by a San Francisco company called Yondr   has a wide opening at the short end for inserting a smartphone. A magnetic locking mechanism  similar to those on anti-theft tags in retail stores  engages to hold it closed. After the show  this clasp is swiped across a counter-magnet  which releases the lock.  Yondr  is a surefire way to cut down on bootleg YouTube videos. In Wired  Alice Gregory recently took a tough look at the device. Gregory recounts her experience at a Chris Rock performance  where audience members waiting in the lobby had to forgo smartphone usage. The affair reduced them to “a roomful of jonesing fiends ” as she puts it. Ultimately  Gregory connects  Yondr  to a thorny question about civil liberties: the right of the people to keep and bear smartphones.
It’s an ironic conclusion  because  Yondr  is sold as a tool to provide freedom  rather than to take it away. To “Be Here Now ” as the company’s tagline puts it. It’s a promise to deliver presence—a tricky calling  to say the least. Presence has a long history in religion and philosophy  from Buddhist practices to the metaphysics of the 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Today  presence is most common in the various mindfulness trends that have overtaken individual and corporate life  in Silicon Valley in particular—collectively the critic R. John Williams has called them “technê-zen.” Cutting through the history and the rhetoric  it’s productive to think about presence in terms of attention. You’re present where you focus your attention—and you only have so much attention to pay. In the case of Chris Rock  he wants attention directed toward him  live on stage. Rock’s show might involve awkward improvisation or new material that he doesn't want circulated online. Teachers are less concerned about copyright than comedians are  but they still demand attention. I have tested Yondr’s effects on mind-wandering in classroom experiments with Dan Smilek of the University of Waterloo Vision and Attention Lab. Our research is based in part on the assumption that instructors want students to focus on the course materials  and not on Instagram  Facebook  or other distractions.  Yondr  can be a remarkably effective tool for enforcing digital abstinence in these contexts  thanks primarily to  its  portability. Rather than locking away devices inside lockers  or even inside a disused Catholic tabernacle  as I have done in a performance piece   Yondr  buffers the anxiety of being isolated from your device.
Given that the mere presence of one’s smartphone can reduce cognitive capacity   Yondr  offers a way to surf between the waves of a device’s presence and absence. You can hold it  but you can’t use it. This might be an especially important balance in classroom situations  where students see a teacher’s “phone shoebox” as an unwelcome imposition of authority. * * * Needless to say   Yondr  is still an imposition. And controlling attention requires more than just locking a device in a binge-breaking neoprene pouch. Joelle Renstrom has reported the results of her own  Yondr  experiment in a class at Boston University  where she had her 30 students lock away their devices over the course of a semester. At first  37 percent of the students found the policy annoying  but by the end of the term that figure had dropped to 14 percent. Those are promising  if tentative  results  but Renstrom’s anecdotal comments about the experiment may be more instructive than the data she collected. Renstrom describes her students’ initial experience of Yondr as “akin to caging a pet  a clear denial of freedom.” Moreover  she observes that some students left their cases unlocked as a sign of rebellion  even though they didn’t remove the phones from them. Rather than becoming “active resistors to technology ” as the scholars Christine Satchell and Paul Dourish call people who choose to ignore their devices   Yondr  users are ultimately the victims of technological disenfranchisement. When implemented as a mandatory smartphone prophylactic   Yondr  becomes a means of control  not of choice  let alone of presence.
Such top-down tactics might be enforced easily at live performances  as one of my research assistants observed firsthand at a Chris Rock show in Niagara Falls. However  as a daily ritual for high-school students  all-or-nothing digital abstinence enforced by an authority figure seems destined to backfire  possibly leading to rejection—or even worse  a legal complaint. In an attempt to tackle this disciplinary problem  I have been offering workshops to schoolteachers that riff on and revise the design Yondr originated. In the workshops  I provide a kit that allows students to make their own digital abstinence case  but with an obnoxiously loud Velcro enclosure rather than a silent  magnetic clasp. This semipermeable design—the Resistor Case  I call it—is intended to promote self-regulation  not authoritarian control. The Velcro acts as a gateway to conscience: It provides just enough resistance and noise to make its owner think twice before opening it. Michael I. Norton  Daniel Mochon  and Dan Ariely coined the “IKEA effect” to name the increase in value people assign to self-made products. With the Resistor Case  I’m counting on a similar effect  that students who fist construct and then choose to make use of their DIY phone lockers might be more compelled to use them. Of course  the kit will only work if the teacher provides a context for it that includes a discussion of responsible smartphone use. (The kit provides a series of cards to prompt this conversation.)
Yondr

In the latest twist in the sexual harassment controversies roiling Congress  Republicans have taken to defending  Democratic Sen. Al Franken .
Yes  thatâs right. While  Franken  announced Thursday  he  would resign in the âcoming weeksâ amid growing allegations of sexual misconduct  some Republicans are not so sure  he  should have to leave the Senate.
âWhat you saw today was a lynch mob â former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday on Laura Ingrahamâs Fox News show after at least 35 Democratic Senators called on  Franken  to step aside. âLetâs not have due process. Letâs not ask anybody any questions. Letâs not have any chance to have a hearing. Letâs just lynch him  because when we get done lynching him  weâll be so pure.â
Eight women have accused  Franken  of sexually harassing them  with the most recent being a woman who told Politico this week that  Franken  tried to forcibly kiss her in 2006.
But Gingrich is not alone in claiming the Democrats are not acting entirely out of sincere moral concern. When interviewing Gingrich on Wednesday  Ingraham also said she believes the Democrats are using  Franken âs situation to claim the moral high ground so they can try to take down Republicans accused of sexual misconduct like President Donald Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
They have used a variety of tactics to dismiss the claims against him  but many of them come down to Republicans saying they do not have proof he did anything wrong. That seems to be the argument GOPers are using again to defend  Franken .
And the Washington Examinerâs Byron York also raised concerns about  Franken  not receiving due process.
Al Franken

When Ashley Loring HeavyRunner  a 20-year-old college student  vanished from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana this summer  her older sister  Kimberly Loring  thought of a promise she once made.
âWhen we were young  we were in the foster care system â  Kimberly Loring  told ABC News. âShe told me  âDonât leave me â and I told her  âI would never leave you  and if you were to get moved  I will find you.ââ
 Kimberly Loring  said  she  was only 8 years old when  she  made that promise. But 15 years later  with  her  sister missing for more than four months   she  said it now seems more important than ever.
âIâm going to keep this promise. Wherever  she  goes  Iâm going to find  her  â  Kimberly Loring  said. âIf I have to search my entire life  I will search until I find  her . â
Kimberly Loring  said  she  learned of  her  sisterâs disappearance in early June  after returning home from a vacation abroad. The sisters had been planning to move  Ashley Loring  into  her  sisterâs apartment in the nearby city of Missoula  where  Kimberly Loring  had landed a good job working with senior citizens.  Kimberly Loring  said  she  expected to hear from  her  little sister the moment  she  got off the plane  but  she  didnât call that day or the next or the day after that.
âI tried to call Ashley  and  she  didnât text me or anything. There was no response from  her  â  Kimberly Loring  said. When  she  couldnât reach  her    she  said  she  began reaching out to  her  sisterâs friends on social media  but none of them had seen  her  since June 5.
â She  was waiting for me  and I know  she  wouldnât up and leave â  Kimberly Loring  said  adding that  her  sister was extremely close with  her  family members and would have told them where  she  was going. Friends and other family members also told ABC News that it was unlike  her  to go so long without contacting anyone.
âSomething happened to  her  â  Kimberly Loring  said.
 Loring  Family Photo
âI donât want to be an 80-year-old woman searching these mountains with my grandchildren â  Kimberly Loring  said. âBut thereâs no choice  because if I give up  whoâs going to look for her?â
Since Ashley Loringâs disappearance   Kimberly Loring  quit  her  job in Missoula and moved back home to the reservation to help look for  her . Family members filed a missing person report with tribal police in mid-June. More than four months later  they said they still have not heard from  her . Tribal police have also been unable to find  her .
â She  blew everyone out of the waterâ
Growing up  the Loring sisters spent several months in foster care before going to live with their grandparents and their other siblings. Life was much better on their grandparentsâ horse ranch   Kimberly Loring  said. The sisters learned how to ride  chopped wood for their grandmotherâs wood stove  mucked stalls and swam in a nearby creek until well after the sun disappeared behind the high plains.
â She  was a good girl. We didnât have no trouble with  her  â Loxie Loring  the girlsâ grandmother  said of Ashley. âI could count on  her  to get a little more work out of  her  than the other two.â
Since  Ashley Loring  disappeared four months ago   Loxie Loring  said  she  has barely left the house.  She  said  she  sits by the phone for most of the day  waiting for  her  granddaughter to call.
As a student at Blackfeet Community College   Ashley Loring  was once asked to give a presentation at a college in Bozeman about buffalo   her  ex-boyfriend Calvin DeRouche said. Her speech earned her praise across the reservation.

Kimberly Loring

