A fidget spinner, what is it?
A fidget spinner, what is it? It is not quite a toy, not exactly a gadget, nor precisely a therapeutic device—and yet, somehow, annoyingly, it is all of those things at once- 1.a fidget spinner is a palm-sized, usually three-pronged object made from plastic or metal or a combination of the two, designed to be spun between finger and thumb with little effort. Fidget spinners became popular toys via the Internet in April 2017, a universally desirable accessory for tween-agers, marketed as a tool for helping people with stress, anxiety, ADHD, Autism, smartphone addiction, among other things. However, as of May 2017, there is no scientific evidence that suggests fidget spinners are effective as a treatment; they’ve become ubiquitous impulse purchases at 7-Eleven’s, gas stations, mobile-phone shops, shopping malls and bodegas and cost way much more than its production.
Apparently, small spinning toys are ubiquitous across Ancient civilizations too. 2.Evidence suggests, spin-tops have been unearthed in ancient Mesopotamia dating back to 35th century BC, discovered in King Tut’s tomb, and also made from fruits and thorns amongst various indigenous tribes. Though tops come in all shapes and sizes, everyone defies gravity in the exact same way—the top (trompo) is an inverted cone with an axis and requires collaboration with the material world, a substrate on which to spin,—eventually, the top falls, succumbing to gravity.
Does the fidget spinner encourage a mental low common denominator, promote a proliferation of mindlessness, distraction and the incapability of formulating a coherent idea? Does the internet do the same—an infinite loop of 3.guh?
As a 4.philosophical instrument, the fidget spinner coupled with mobile phone apps/technologies are rich, dense fossils of the immediate present as well as channels to the past. Like a lightbulb, light changes the capacity to see in environments—to illuminate the phenomena of life and to examine phenomena experimentally 5.through being and being with someone else, with something else, in something like architecture.
Conceptually, the spinner reminds me of Ollin (pronounced: ALL-in)— an Aztec day sign/symbol represented as pulsating, oscillating, centering on motion-change depicted in the center of the Aztec calendar around the face of the solar deity, Tonatiuh, which appears inside the glyph for "movement" (Nahuatl: Ōllin), the protector of daylight and the name of the current era— along with a UFO spaceship, a gyroscope, a turntable, a kinetic poem and a timer with the longest spin time clocked at 03:33.78 minutes thus far.
At their core these toys are something more, and something stranger: the perfect material metaphor for everyday life in this post-neoliberal, grimly neo-fascist, digital world in which we now live in.
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1. Pappas, S. ‘Fidget Spinners: What They Are, How They Work and Why the Controversy’. Live Science. 2017. August 15 https://www.livescience.com/58916-fidget-spinner-faq.html
2. Jaffel, D. ‘The History of Toys from Spinning Tops to Robots’. Stroud, (England) Sutton, 2006
3. A term that originated in D.C. used to convey speechlessness, whether it's caused by amazement, anger, or the other person being a complete idiot. Urban Dictionary https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=guh
4. Hist, J. ‘Philosophical Instruments and Toys: Optical Devices Extending the Art of Seeing’. NeuroScience 2004 Mar;13(1):102-24. In the nineteenth century, some instruments were called philosophical toys because they provided popular amusement as well as experimental assistance. They were applied widely in natural philosophy, but attention here is directed particularly to manipulations of perceived space and time and their influence on art. One of the earliest instruments, which had a profound impact on art as well as science, was the camera obscura.
5. Sloterdijk, P. “Spheres Theory: Talking to Myself About the Poetics of Space”. Harvard University. 2009. February 17