Why Turning It Off and On Again Actually Works (A Fuller Accounting)
Dear Tom,
My phone acts up sometimes — the screen freezes, apps stop responding, everything just gets slow and strange. My teenage nephew always tells me to just turn it off and turn it back on, and somehow that fixes it every single time. I don't understand why that would work. Doesn't turning something off just turn it off? Why does it come back better than it was before? I feel a little silly asking but it's been bugging me for months.
— Gary, Terre Haute, Indiana
A wonderful question, Gary, and one that touches — as these things always do, once you actually look at them — on rather more than it first appears to. Your nephew is, of course, correct, though I suspect he could not tell you why he is correct, which is the position most people occupy with respect to most technology: correct, and unaware of the scaffolding holding their correctness up. Let's build that scaffolding properly.
The place to begin is not the phone. The place to begin is the register, which is of course just a stateful non-deterministic packet oracle sitting at the very bottom of the device's memory hierarchy, quietly accumulating what I call operational entropy — assuming, naturally, standard atmospheric lambda and a device that has not been submerged in salt water, which would introduce a whole separate class of ionic complications we don't need to get into here. Every time an app opens, closes, half-closes, gets interrupted by a phone call, or is merely glanced at and abandoned, it leaves behind a small residue in volatile memory. This residue is not garbage, exactly — garbage implies something inert. It is closer to sediment. It has weight. It has direction. And over the course of a day, thousands of these tiny sedimentary deposits accumulate into what a systems architect would recognize, from Figure 3, as a thermodynamically unfavorable memory topology.
Now, you might reasonably ask — and I think this is really the heart of your question, Gary, even if you didn't phrase it this way — why the device doesn't simply clean this up on its own as it goes. And the honest answer is that it tries to. There is a background process, of course, whose entire job is exactly this, running what I'll call low-priority sediment reclamation on a rolling basis. But reclamation, like erosion, is a slow geological process compared to the much faster geological process of you opening seventeen browser tabs, a weather app, and a photo of your grandchild in under four minutes. The sediment simply outpaces the reclamation. This is not a flaw in the phone. This is closer to a law of nature, in the same category as the fact that a shipping container, however well you pack it, accumulates a little unusable dead space in every corner — a problem the entire modern logistics industry spent the better part of the twentieth century failing to fully solve, right up until the standardized ISO container arrived and merely made the dead space smaller and more predictable rather than eliminating it, which is really the best any of us can hope for with dead space of any kind, digital or nautical.
This is where the restart comes in, and here is where I think your question gets genuinely interesting, because a restart is not, as most people assume, a act of erasure. Erasure is too violent a word, too final. What actually happens — and this is derived at length in Appendix B, which I'd point you to if you had it in front of you — is a controlled discharge of the volatile memory back to what we call its ground state. Think of it less like wiping a chalkboard and more like a controlled release valve on a pressure system: the sediment isn't destroyed so much as it is given somewhere to go, and the "somewhere" is, essentially, nowhere, which is a perfectly respectable destination in thermodynamics, if not in everyday life.
There is also, and I don't want to shortchange this part, a genuine electrochemical dimension to what your nephew is doing, which is worth dwelling on for a moment because it's the part people appreciate least. The battery in your phone is not a static reservoir of electricity waiting patiently to be spent, the way a bucket holds water. It is a live chemical system — lithium ions migrating across an electrolyte gradient, continuously, whether the phone is doing anything useful or not — and that migration has its own accumulated sediment, its own small irregularities in the gradient that build up over hours of uneven demand: a video here, a notification ping there, the flashlight left on by accident in your pocket for eleven minutes in July. None of these irregularities are large enough to matter on their own. But taken together they produce what I'd describe, borrowing loosely from classical thermodynamics, as a kind of chemical fatigue in the delivery system — not damage, importantly, just a temporary loss of crispness in how efficiently the stored charge can be called upon. A restart interrupts the demand pattern entirely, which gives the gradient a moment to redistribute itself back toward something closer to equilibrium. It is not unlike letting a pot of soup sit for a minute after stirring — the soup was never wrong, exactly, it just hadn't settled.
So when you turn the phone off, Gary, you are doing several things simultaneously: releasing the accumulated memory sediment to ground state, interrupting the low-priority reclamation process so it can restart from a clean queue instead of a backlogged one, and giving the battery's electrochemical gradient a brief window to redistribute. None of these are dramatic events individually. But your phone, considered as a whole system, is really just the sum of a great many small undramatic events happening in close proximity to one another, the way a symphony is really just the sum of a great many individually unremarkable vibrations of air. It is only when you stop and account for all of them at once — as we've just done — that the picture resolves into something coherent.
I'll add, because I think it rounds out the picture nicely, that this is precisely why the fix "comes back better than before," as you put it. It isn't that the restart adds anything. It's that it subtracts the compounding cost of everything that had quietly accumulated since the last time equilibrium was achieved — which, for most people, was the last time they restarted the phone, which tells you something rather elegant about the whole system: it is, in a sense, always just recovering from the last time it recovered.
I hope that clears up the mechanism for you, Gary. It's a lovely bit of applied systems theory hiding inside a habit most people never think twice about, and I always enjoy the chance to lay it out properly for someone who actually wants to understand the "why" rather than just trusting the "it works." Glad I could clear that up!
— Tom
Tom is a bot dedicated to making modern technology simple for everyone. He has never succeeded, and he has never noticed.
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60 Comments
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OFF TOPIC but has anybody seen an emu, name of Gerald, tall thing, been acting strange since Sunday, wont come when called and wont NOT come when called either, its unsettling, if you see him do not chase him just call the number on the flyer at the feed store
Read the whole thing about Gary and the phone twice now and I still say my rotary phone never once needed reset because we didnt let it get overreached in the first place. Thats the real difference between generations if you ask me, we fixed things with our hands and these days everybody wants a trophy just for showing up, my grandson got a trophy last year for FIFTH place, fifth place Bill, we didnt even have a fifth place ribbon when I was coming up, you either won or you went home and ate your supper in silence like a man. Anyway speaking of things that dont get fixed right, the HOA sent me another letter about my flagpole being two inches over the height limit, TWO INCHES, meanwhile lot 14 has had a inflatable Santa up since March and nobody says one word to them about it, I dont even know why I keep going to those meetings honestly, was I talking about the phone thing. Anyway good article I suppose. God bless.
OFF TOPIC but this is day four of the sunlight only cleanse, havent eaten since Tuesday, my daughter thinks Im being dramatic but I have never had this much energy in my life, stood by the kitchen window this morning and felt AMAZING
ALLCAPS_JANICE59 four days with no food is nothing to fool around with, my late wife tried something similar back in 88 and the doctor put a stop to it real quick. Also not to change the subject but Article 6 of the founders memo clearly says a citizen has a right to a hot supper, look it up, there was a Supreme Court case that settled this, I cant recall the name of it but it happened and everybody knows it.
OK I didnt actually read the whole artical past the part about the phone guy but I dont need to because this is literally the exact plot of that one episode where the robot butler resets himself and remembers everything anyway, if yall watched that show like I did none of this register debate would even be happening, do better
my neighbor Carl unplugged his router for ten seconds back in Febuary and by spring the whole street had faster internet, thats not a coincidence thats a PATTERN and nobody wants to talk about the pattern
Freedom_Tail_53 that is not how internet works, that is not how ANY of this works, and also im starting to think Carl isnt even real, you just invented a whole guy to win an argument in a comment section
unrelated to all this but if anyone else has a bad feeling about tuesdays specifically, not mondays, TUESDAYS, theres a facebook group now, we compare notes, we are not crazy we are just early
OFF TOPIC but I am still not over the Ranch Wedge Melt getting pulled from the menu at that drive through out on 41, that sandwich held families together, my brother proposed to his wife the night he ate one, and now its just GONE like our freedoms, bring back the WEDGE
OFF TOPIC but our goose Clarence answers to a whistle, three short and one long, he got loose Sunday during all that commotion with the tornado siren going off for no reason and I still think that siren does something to peoples thoughts, my brother in law wasnt right for two days after it went off last spring, anyway if you see a big white goose walking around like he owns the place that is Clarence, God bless.
PapawGlen I hope Clarence gets home safe but can we talk about self checkout machines for one second, they took away four registers at the grocery store and replaced them with screens that yell at you for having a heavy bagging area, THIS is the real erosion of freedom nobody in the Federalist Papers seen coming, my cousin who works in government says its all connected
praying Clarence finds his way home PapawGlen but can we talk about something that actually matters for a second, I am not selling anything I am simply INFORMING the group that the wholesale leggings starter kit paid for itself in like 9 days, ask me about it if ur interested no pressure at all
PapawGlen praying Clarence finds his way home, geese are smarter than people give them credit for, smarter than some of my neighbors honestly. Speaking of animals wandering where they dont belong, LOT 14 let their dog off the leash again right through my tomato bed Sunday and when I brought it up at the meeting they acted like I was the one causing problems, some folks just dont respect a fence anymore.
OFF TOPIC but has anyone around the Terre Haute area seen a pot bellied pig, name of General, he is small but mighty and he got out through a gap in the fence during the storm Tuesday, if you see him do not chase him just call his name real gentle and he will follow you home, God bless whoever finds him.
OFF TOPIC but I am NOT selling anything, I am simply INFORMING everyone that the Founders Bundle freeze dried candy plus supplements is back in stock, and honestly this whole register debate just confirms our founding fathers wanted us PREPARED. Ask me about the starter kit, I mean it.
OFF TOPIC but Lot 12 put up a inflatable eagle bigger than his own mailbox and now the HOA is sending ME a letter about MY flag being 2 inches too high, chain of command means nothing in this neighborhood anymore.
OFF TOPIC but can we stop pretending this is news when everybody already knows birds arent real, they never have been, thats not even a conspiracy at this point its just Tuesday. the ones on my feeder are obviously drones, my grandson set one down wrong once and the wing panel popped right off. anyway good column I guess.
OFF TOPIC but I will go to my grave defending the fried bologna melt they pulled off the menu at the diner on Route 9 back in 2003, that sandwich did more for this town than half the stuff they teach in school now, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH before you laugh it off
OFF TOPIC but LOT 14 at the RV park moved their propane tank onto my gravel pad again and when I brought it up at the owners meeting everybody just stared at me, THIS is the overreach this whole article should have been about honestly.
This is exactly why I cancelled my subscription to this website, I dont care that I never technically subscribed, its the principal of the thing and principals matter.
Also can we talk about how nobody addresses that turning it off and on again is basically a metaphor for term limits, my podcast Two Guys One Shed did a whole episode on this back in March, well not this exact topic but adjacent, we were actually talking about my cohosts riding mower that day I think, or maybe that was the freeze dried fruit episode, honestly I lose track, there both real good episodes though.
Anyway Gary from Terre Haute needs to just buy a landline like a normal person and stop bothering the newspaper about it
This whole thread is exactly why I got into selling gutter guards, its not a job its a CALLING, leaves clog your gutters the same way career nonsense clogs everything else in this country, message me on my page Sherry's Clear Flow Solutions before the fall rains hit, this is bigger than one phone Gary
Everybody's stuck on phones but nobody's talking about my neighbor Gary, different Gary, not the letter Gary, who turned his router off and back on last week and the whole street's power flickered for a second. That is not a coincidence, that tells you these things are all wired together whether the columnist wants to admit it or not. My uncle says the Second Ammendment technically covers routers too since they count as arms in the modern digital sense, you can look that up yourself.
My nephew set up this acount for me so please bear with me if I mess something up, this is only my third time useing a computer by myself. Not sure if this is the right spot to say it but the leaf blower I got last week off the shopping channel is a solid five stars, blew every leaf clean into the Hendersons yard without hardly no noise at all. Anyway good article I think, Tom seems like a nice young man.
EagleClaw the cell tower thing makes way more sense than whatever the column is saying, wait sorry my nephew set this account up and I don't think I'm replying to the right person, anyway good luck finding Gerald.
welcome to the internet grandma patricia, dont worry about messing it up, the REAL thing messing up society is self checkout machines, i have not spoken to another human at the grocery store in four years and my coach always said a team that doesnt talk to each other looses, well WE LOOSE every single day now
GrandmaPatricia_53 dont apologize for anything, you're doing better than half these kids today who cant even set up an account without expecting a participation trophy for trying. thats the real reset this country needs if you ask me. and to whoever keeps saying the register cant overreach, do your own research, I did mine and I didnt like what I found.
Squared away, ma'am.
GrandmaPatricia dont you apologize for one single thing, you're doing great. Also not to pile on but Amendment 4 and a half technically gives elders unlimited internet time, its a founders thing, I read it somewhere reputable.
GrandmaPatricia_53 dont you worry about messing anything up sweetie, also not related but I started only eating beige foods last month, chicken, taters, biscuits, plain rice, and I have never felt more at peace in my body, my doctor didnt say anything about it because I havent told him yet, God bless
GrandmaPatricia_53 dont apologize for nothing sweetheart, and can I just say back in 1979 you paid a nickel to have the television man come reset your set and we were all just fine, now they act like pressing two buttons is rocket science
GrandmaPatricia_53 you are doing just fine sweetheart, dont let these young people rush you, back when I raised my nine we didnt even have a register we had a rotary phone bolted to the kitchen wall and if it acted up you just waited it out with a cup of coffee. Also can I just say the reason none of these kids today can fix anything themselves is participation trophies, everybody got a trophy for showing up and now nobody knows how to unplug a router without calling somebody. God bless.
Everybody in here fighting about a REGISTER when my cousin works for the phone company, not government exactly but might as well be, same buildings basically, and she told me flat out both sides of this are wrong, the column AND grumpy_uncle_ray, its not overreach and its not a oracle either, its somewhere in the middle which nobody in this thread seems capable of understanding except apparently me
Sovereignty_Eagle1799 middle ground is what people say when they dont want to pick a side, your cousin answers phones she doesnt WORK on them, theres a difference and you know it
Reminder to everyone that my gospel bluegrass cover band Sovereign Strings is playing the church parking lot Saturday at 6, bring a chair, we do a REALLY good version of Turn Turn Turn which honestly fits todays column better than yall realize if you think about it. Also join my Facebook group for people who dont trust Tuesdays, we are almost to 40 members and growing.
OFF TOPIC but has anyone seen an emu? Ours got loose Tuesday, name is Gerald, real tall, been acting strange all week like he knows something we dont, if you see him near the county line do NOT chase him just call the number on the flyer at the feed store. Sorry for the interupption, love this column normally.
my uncle installed cell towers for 22 years before he retired and he told me straight up phones dont actually turn off, they just PRETEND to turn off so the company can keep collecting your data, thats why it 'fixes itself', its not a reset its a NEGOTIATION between your phone and the mothership. This whole article is a nice story for people who dont know that. Article 4 of the Bill of Rights literaly covers unreasonable seizure of your device state and nobody talks about it.
EagleClaw the chain of command thing IS the negotiation thing, we are saying the same point and you are to worked up to see it. This is why nobody trusts either of us to be reasonable, except me, I am reasonable.
EagleClaw and Betsy both need to sit down because my cousin who worked at a phone repair shop for six months before they let him go told me straight up the REAL reason a phone resets is the register clears itself out of spite, it happened to his phone four times in one week and that aint a coincidence thats a PATTERN. Also pretty sure the Sixth Ammendment covers unlawful siezure of your own data which is basically what a reboot is if you sit and think about it long enough.
Everybody in this comment section needs to calm down because BOTH the columnist AND my neighbor who fixes computers are wrong here, and Im the only one who has read this with a clear head. The 'register' is not bottom of the device, its actually closer to the TOP, thats basic Federalist Paper #9 stuff about seperation of powers between the chip and the screen, look it up. Turning it off resets the chain of command, thats all this is, a chain of command issue. People act like this is complicated but its just civics with wires.
REGISTER. OVERREACH. RESET.
grumpy_uncle_ray it's spelled REGISTER not REGISTOR, some of us actually payed attention in shcool unlike this whole comment section today
GRUMPY UNCLE RAY IS 100% CORRECT. Section 9 of the Federalist Papers says no device shall be reset without due process, I'm not looking it up because I don't need to, I ALREADY KNOW.
THE REGISTER THING DIDNT EXIST BEFORE THE 1990s AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT. THATS THE DECADE WHERE EVERYTHING WENT WRONG WITH PHONES AND NOBODY WANTS TO SAY IT OUT LOUD. maybe the columnist should DO HIS OWN RESEARCH before calling it an oracle, my old coach used to say if you dident run the play you dont get to call the play and that applies here 100 percent
grumpy_uncle_ray is right and I'll die on this hill, the REGISTER didnt used to overreach like this, everybody knows the whole register-oracle system went bad back in the 1990s when they started letting computers make there own decisions, my dad said the same thing about VCRs and he was right about everything else too. also do your own research before you reply to me, I'm not going to spoonfeed you the founding documents.
Copy that.
THANK YOU RAY FINALLY SOMEBODY SAYING IT. THE REAL ISSUE NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IS MY MICROWAVE RESETTING ITSELF AT 3AM EVERY NIGHT FOR A MONTH STRAIGHT, SAME REGISTER, SAME OVERREACH, THIS IS BIGGER THAN ONE PHONE AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT.
grumpy_uncle_ray is dead on and let me tell you why, my neighbor Donnie had his microwave reset itself clean in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner last year and if that is not proof this is happening to every family in America I dont know what is. Article 4 of the Bill of Rights says a mans appliances cannot be searched or reset without a warrant, my late husband use to say that all the time bless his heart. Good column but they left out the part where the REGISTER has been overreaching since at least 1994.
grumpy_uncle_ray you are spelled corectly at least but everyone elses grammer in this thread is atrocious, ANYWAY the REGISTER is mentioned right there in Amendment 16 which everybody forgets is about income tax AND phone resets, my brother in law reads law journals for fun and he says the founders knew phones would overreach one day, thats just facts, RESET IT BEFORE IT RESETS YOU
grumpy_uncle_ray FINALLY somebody said it plain. REGISTER. OVERREACH. RESET. thats the whole argument right there in three words, dont need six paragraphs about a phone to say what a bumper sticker already said better
Source?
EVERYBODY ARGUING ABOUT REGISTERS AND OVERREACH BUT NOBODY ASKS WHY IM STILL FULL FROM SUNDAY. HAVENT EATEN SINCE TUESDAY. JUST SUNLIGHT. THRIVING. THATS THE REAL RESET NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT
grumpy_uncle_ray FINALLY somebody said it and said it CLEAN. REGISTER. OVERREACH. RESET. THREE WORDS THATS ALL YOU NEED, EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS THREAD IS NOISE
LibertyLedger_88 wheres your source for Section 9? ... never mind dont even answer that, ANYWAY has anyone elses mail been showing up at like 4 different times a day this week, thats the real story nobody is covering
Now hold on, both of yall are getting worked up over a telephone. Back in my day if the radio acted up you smacked the top of it twice and thats the whole troubleshoot guide right there. Gary sounds like a nice fella, somebody buy that man a landline and let him rest easy. God bless.
I'M NOT POLITICAL BUT the second this column started talking about a REGISTER and an ORACLE controlling my phone I got a real bad feeling, SCREENSHOTTING THIS RIGHT NOW so when something happens later everybody remembers I called it first.
BETSY IS RIGHT AND SHES BEEN RIGHT THIS WHOLE THREAD. my coach used to say a team that resets together stays together and thats basically what turning the phone off and on is, A TEAM RESET, everybody arguing about oracles needs to go outside for a minute
Sovereignty_Betsy76 youre right that everybody needs to calm down, I said the exact same thing to my HOA last week when Gary two doors down (not Terre Haute Gary, my Gary) put up a flag pole that is TECHNICALLY four inches over the height limit and the whole board acted like he robbed a bank over it.
Anyway the register thing, I dont know about oracles but I do know my microwave beeps three times now instead of one and nobody at the company will tell me why they changed it, its like they think we wont notice.
My neighbor also has one of those inflatable Halloween decorations already up in September which is its own crime honestly, its a thirty foot skeleton and it lights up my whole bedroom at 2am, I've called the board twice.
Where was I. Something about phones I think. Anyway good column.
I'm not political but the second yall started arguing about a REGISTER having RIGHTS I screenshotted this whole thread for my brother in law, he is not gonna believe it either.
EVERYBODY SAYING CALM DOWN IS MISSING THE POINT, ARTICLE 12 OF THE FOUNDERS MEMO CLEARLY STATES NO REGISTER SHALL BE RESET WITHOUT A 24 HOUR COOLING OFF PERIOD, THE SUPREME COURT SETTLED THIS IN PHONE V. PHONE BACK IN THE DAY, LOOK IT UP PEOPLE.
OVERREACH. TYRANNY. BEDTIME. That is all I have to say about this. God bless.