The Albany Gazette - The Great Hang-Up: Why the AI Era Is Making Us Crave a More Analog Life, and Why Coilie Is Betting on It

MIAMI BEACH, FL / ACCESS Newswire / August 10, 2026 / For years, technology has been designed around one basic promise: make everything easier.

Faster answers. Faster communication. Faster shopping. Faster work. Faster entertainment. Now, with artificial intelligence capable of writing, creating, recommending, summarizing and responding almost instantly, we may be approaching the logical conclusion of that promise.

And strangely, it is making a lot of people nostalgic for inconvenience.

Film cameras are back. Vinyl never really left. Flip phones have become an unlikely object of desire. People are buying paper planners, joining run clubs, taking pottery classes, playing pickleball, hosting dinner parties and rediscovering hobbies that require their hands to be occupied by something other than a screen.

The more digital life becomes, the more appealing the physical world seems to get.

It isn't necessarily a rejection of technology. Most of us aren't trading our smartphones for rotary phones or asking ChatGPT to please stop making our lives easier.

But there is a growing realization that convenience has come with a tradeoff.

Our phones aren't simply tools we pick up when we need them anymore. They're alarm clocks, cameras, televisions, maps, offices, newspapers, shopping malls and social lives. They sit next to us while we eat. They come to bed with us. We reach for them in elevators, at stoplights and during the three seconds it takes another person to go to the bathroom at dinner.

Then AI arrived and somehow made the digital world even harder to escape.

Which raises an interesting question: What if the next great consumer trend isn't about adding more technology to our lives, but creating better boundaries around the technology we already have?

The New Luxury Might Be Your Full Attention

For millennials in particular, there is a strange dividing line between childhood and adulthood.

Many grew up with technology, but they didn't necessarily grow up inside it.

The family phone had a physical location. You called someone, talked to them and eventually hung up. Going outside meant becoming temporarily unreachable. Your friends couldn't see what you were doing unless they were actually there.

There was an ending to communication.

Today, communication never really ends.

A text leads to Instagram, which leads to an email notification, which leads to a news alert, which leads to a TikTok, which somehow leads to realizing you've been staring at your phone for 40 minutes when you originally picked it up to check the weather.

That experience is part of what inspired college friends and millennial moms Kate Trey and Lauren Czajka to found Coilie in 2026.

Their idea is almost comically simple.

Give the smartphone a home.

Meet the Modern Landline

Coilie isn't trying to turn your smartphone into a dumb phone. It isn't another app telling you how much time you're spending using other apps. And it isn't asking people to abandon the technology they rely on.

Instead, Coilie created a wall-mounted "perch" where you can physically hang up your smartphone at home.

Think of it as the modern descendant of the kitchen landline.

The phone still works. It still charges. You can still answer it, make a call or grab it when you need it. The difference is that it doesn't automatically live in your hand, pocket or next to your dinner plate.

"The phone is the only object we use all day that somehow doesn't have a home. Our keys have a hook. Our coats have a closet. Our phones quietly attached themselves to our bodies-and then into our nervous systems," says Coilie cofounder Lauren Czajka. "Coilie solves that problem with an intentionally-designed solution: a place to once again hang up our phones."

There is something compelling about solving a thoroughly modern problem with an idea that would have seemed completely ordinary 30 years ago.

Don't carry the phone around the house.

Hang it up.

Sunshine Yellow, Coiled Cords and a Little Bit of Nostalgia

Coilie isn't hiding its nostalgic inspiration.

For its Kickstarter campaign, the Coilie perch is being offered in Sunshine Yellow, with a recyclable aluminum core wrapped in soft, matte silicone. The Founder's Edition also includes a long, stretchy USB-C to USB-C charging cable designed to evoke one of the most satisfying pieces of pre-smartphone technology: the coiled landline cord.

Except this one charges a modern phone at full speed and can stretch across the counter without becoming a tangled mess.

The kit also includes a wall charger and mounting hardware, with both screws and adhesive installation options.

It's a small piece of industrial design built around a surprisingly big behavioral idea.

Instead of asking yourself to have more willpower around your phone, change where the phone physically exists.

That distinction matters.

2D People vs. 3D People

Coilie also isn't positioning itself as anti-tech.

Its founders use smartphones. Their kids are growing up in a digital world. AI isn't disappearing. Social media isn't disappearing. Nobody is suggesting we collectively throw our iPhones into the ocean.

The mission is more nuanced: technology should have a place in our lives without automatically occupying every place in our lives.

"I kept asking myself, who's more important-the 2D people on our screens or the 3D people in the room?" says cofounder Kate Trey. "We're not anti-phone or anti-technology. We just believe it has a time and a place; the people in front of us deserve to feel like they have our full attention."

That may be the larger reason Coilie feels particularly timely.

Parents are thinking about what phone habits they're modeling for their children. Couples are negotiating whether phones belong at dinner. Friends joke about stacking their devices in the middle of the table. Restaurants and hospitality concepts are leaning further into experiences that give people a reason to look up.

We spent years talking about the technology that connects us.

Now we're starting to talk about whether being constantly connected is actually making it harder to connect.

Coilie Is Closing In on Its Kickstarter Goal

That message appears to be resonating.

Coilie is currently approximately 90% of the way toward its $50,000 Kickstarter goal, meaning supporters have already pledged roughly $45,000 toward bringing the modern landline concept to life.

The campaign is more than a crowdfunding milestone. It is an interesting little signal of where consumer sentiment may be heading.

People aren't necessarily looking to go backward.

They're looking for ways to take the parts of the past that worked and redesign them for the lives we have now.

Back Coilie: The Modern Landline on Kickstarter⁠

Maybe the Future Looks a Little More Like the Past

Every technological revolution eventually creates its own counterculture.

Fast food helped create farm-to-table. Mass production increased the appeal of handmade goods. Streaming made vinyl feel special again. Endless digital photography helped revive film cameras.

AI and ubiquitous smartphones may be creating their own response.

Not an anti-technology movement, but a pro-human one.

We may see more products designed specifically to create friction between us and our devices. More phone-free spaces. More analog hobbies. More tactile objects. More experiences that can't be replicated by scrolling. More technology that knows when to disappear.

And perhaps that's why something as simple as a yellow perch and a stretchy coiled cord can suddenly feel surprisingly relevant.

Coilie isn't promising to solve our relationship with technology.

It's simply giving us somewhere to put it down.

In an era obsessed with what technology can do next, that might be exactly the kind of innovation people are ready for.

About Coilie

Founded in 2026 by longtime friends and millennial moms Kate Trey and Lauren Czajka, Coilie is reimagining how people interact with technology at home. Its flagship product, the Coilie Perch, gives smartphones a dedicated place to live, encouraging healthier digital habits without asking users to disconnect entirely. By blending thoughtful industrial design with modern functionality, Coilie aims to help people create intentional boundaries around technology while staying connected to what matters most.

About Industry & Influence

Industry & Influence is an independent business publication covering the companies, entrepreneurs, brands, and innovators shaping modern business. Through original reporting, executive interviews, feature stories, and editorial analysis, the publication explores leadership, innovation, emerging industries, and the ideas driving the future of business.

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Industry and Influence
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Coilie
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE: Industry & Influence

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(W.Williams--TAG)