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EDITORIAL | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS

Written by Tashi Donnelly she/her | @tashi_rd | Editor

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I’ve tried writing this editorial over, and over, and over again. The problem is that there are no outside perspectives anymore. Screens are everywhere. We need an app to book an appointment, order a meal, access government services, or even register a bus card. We’re accused of being addicted to screens, yet participation in modern society increasingly requires one. 

I’ve tried to look at screens and see what they are, what they mean, and what they represent. I pondered how they function, and what their function is in our lives. The more I looked, the blurrier everything became. Like repeating a word until it loses all meaning, or staring at your own reflection until it starts to look like someone else. What I found was what had been in front of me all along: the dead, black surface of the screen. Before it becomes a portal to a world of endless possibility (and admin), it is just a mirror, reflecting me back at myself.

In Central Mexico during the postclassic period (1200–1521), obsidian was ground and polished to create mirrors. These reflective plates of black volcanic glass were used in rituals to contact the dead. One of the most powerful gods in Aztec religion was Tezcatlipoca. His name, from the Nahuatl language, is typically translated as "Smoking Mirror", referring to the obsidian mirror that allowed him to see everything happening in the world. 

At its most basic, functional level, a screen is a medium. A conduit, of sorts. A flat piece of glass that disappears the moment it comes alive. Beneath the glass are millions of pixels – tiny red, green, and blue lights switching on and off quickly enough for our brains to read them as moving images. The screen, nothing more than a fancy lightbulb, is our bridge to the digital world. 

Unlike gods who represented purely good or evil, Tezcatlipoca embodied change through conflict. He could grant fortune or bring disaster, reward or punish, depending on human actions. The Aztecs viewed him as an all-seeing deity who constantly observed the world. While reading about Tezcatlipoca and his mirror (procrastinating my editorial), I was struck by an uneasy sense of familiarity. It unsettled me that humans 800 years ago were grappling with a concept that feels remarkably close to our modern reality: a force that sees everything, knows our behaviour, and quietly influences the choices we make. 

Screens reflect us, literally, when they’re turned off. But we are also reflected in how we use our screens, in what we choose to share and not to share online, in our choice of apps and the YouTube videos we watch. The honesty of a mirror is not a choice, but a consequence of its physics. Tezcatlipoca is the god who sees what others cannot. To the Aztecs, looking into Tezcatlipoca's mirror meant confronting the truth about oneself. 

I stare at the background picture of my phone. It’s a painting by John Everett Millais called The Princes in the Tower, the two boys framed by apps like Letterboxd, a free period tracker, and “DUN DUN: Law & Order”. How much of me is truly reflected in my screens?

The violation people feel when someone touches their phone without permission is surprisingly similar to the violation felt when someone crosses a physical boundary. Smartphones are not just objects we own anymore; they have become extensions of ourselves. The screen is me, which makes writing about screens difficult. I can’t examine them as some distant, external phenomenon, because my relationship with technology is inseparable from my relationship with the modern world itself. I am not just someone who uses technology; I am someone who is shaped by it. 

Maybe that is the mistake we keep making. We talk about screens as if they are separate from us, as if they are some foreign object that has invaded our lives. But screens are human creations. They contain our art, our stories, our friendships, our memories, and our curiosity. A mirror can show us something ugly, but that does not make the mirror evil. It simply means we have to be willing to look.