There's a paragraph of ideas here which have been diluted with a shipping container's worth of Alpha-getti. The author could do with an editor.

One example: "The things we used to fix cherished memory—the dogeared, well-worried-over Kodachromes of lovers, children, schoolmates and pets that once populated the world’s plastic wallet inserts..." Kodachrome was reversal (slide or motion picture) film, so it doesn't usually get carried around in wallets or dog-eared.

You don't keep slides in your wallet?

Kodachrome was one of the first successful color film technologies, and had a strong product identity with consumers. In the early days of color photo prints, they were often called "Kodachromes," after the film, even if the actual photochemistry was different.

Editor to author:
This is Longreads! Your essay's too damn short! Now go and make it longer.

I think it's interesting that the author thinks people usually care about the environmental costs of technology (and that these are new), but are overlooking them because they love their smartphones so much. I feel like that's a big stretch to make the smartphones the enemy of concern here.