A disconnected phone becomes an inert object stripped of its portal quality

Evidence

But after that brief spell of panic, I was surprised to find how quickly I stopped caring. Not only that, I was fascinated with how inert my phone appeared as an object; it was no longer a portal to a thousand other places, a machine charged with dread and potentiality, or even a communication device. It was just a black metal rectangle, lying there as silently and matter-of-factly as a sweater or a book. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 131

Categorization

• QUESTION: Note the slippage here: the object’s ‘portal’ quality is a function of connection, not of the device itself — worth chasing whether Odell grants that attention-constitution requires the technical affordance.
• XREF: connects to: A phone is a mere inert object apart from the attention directed into it. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 131; Old telephony structure forced deliberate choices that modern devices erase. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 593; Smartphone touch operates without sensuality, as digital relays rather than felt contact — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1768
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A phone is a mere inert object apart from the attention directed into it. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 131; Old telephony structure forced deliberate choices that modern devices erase. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 593; Smartphone touch operates without sensuality, as digital relays rather than felt contact — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1768

Broader Connections

• A phone is a mere inert object apart from the attention directed into it. #corroborates (0.93) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 131
• Smartphone touch operates without sensuality, as digital relays rather than felt contact #complicates (0.76) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1768