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Introduction xv loss of personal attention priority. Smartphone alerts then take priority over any ongoing exchange, and the sheer presence of users’ smartphones provokes them to log on to various sites, overriding whatever else they may be doing. Provocation to access the Internet on a smartphone is difficult to pin down concisely. It seems to be a matter of the smartphone just being there, but the smartphone is not there as a device it is there as an inviting portal, as an entryway. To appreciate how this works, imagine that you have just stepped out of a room in which captivating conversations are taking place. The smartphone is like the open door through which you left the room, and through which you can reenter the room. The conver- sations remain ongoing, and through the smartphone portal, you can again continue being part of them. In this way, the smartphone is a con- stant invitation to engage in whatever is going on in digital space. As I have indicated, there have been many warnings about excessive smartphone use. The impact of these alerts has been and continues to be marginal. The smartphone is almost certainly the single most influential product of technological advancement, and as such, it is having the great- est effect on people and their habits. It is very, very difficult to imagine a significant reduction in smartphone use occurring anytime soon, if at all. In this respect, technological advancement has decidedly changed us, and the consequences of the change are yet to be tracked, assessed, and dealt with. To close this brief introduction, I want to stress that the articles that follow are not about technology per se. The articles are about what tech- nology enables and some of the consequences of that enablement—­ consequences that are primarily practices that change people’s behavior and, in doing so, remold who they are. The hard question technological enablement raises is this: When do the changes that new devices foster make people and their lives better, and when they do the opposite? Con- tributors to this collection approach this question from different back- grounds, interests, and expertise. My objective as editor was to gather diverse perspectives on technological enablement, but the aim of the col- lection is not to convince readers of one view or another of the conse- quences of technological enablement. The aim of the collection is to prompt readers to think seriously about the various issues considered. Notes 1. C.G. Prado, CFRC-FM, “What on Earth Is Going On . . . With the Digital Age,” Episode 2, May 11, 2018, available as a podcast at www.woegoshow.com.