I love writing
It’s something I’ve loved since I was young.
I don’t do enough of it, and certainly not consistently. But I am finding lately it’s not for lack of wanting or lack of motivation, rather it’s a lack of tactile real-world creative feedback.
Sidebar: I recently bought a door. Painted it with blackboard paint. On both sides. And leaned it against a wall in my office. I plan things on it. I draw ideas on it. I generally just have fun with concepts on it.
What I’m getting at is that in my constant absorption within this wonderful digital world within a world that we’ve built up around ourselves.
This intangible, out-of-reach, scraggly little blanket – I feel cut off.
Overwhelmed honestly, and in this deluge of information, to-dos, action-orientated blog posts, top ten lists, and posts about “20 [Insert Semi Useful Thing] You’ve Probably Missed Out On.”
More blah blah here, more blah blah there.
It’s a bit much. It’s also not real. It’s chock full of faux experiences, faux connections, and shock horror faux friendships. You know the type, “Yes I’ll accept your friend request, ‘cause yes I’m awesome, and now I have 500. And it’s awesome.”
Flash forward to some version of a mini-mart somewhere and it’s all about ducking into aisle three because you’d rather develop an intense interest in the ingredients of floor polish that speak to your ‘new’ friend.
I’m finding this digital world with its constant SEO gardeners, social (I’m not interested, but it’s a good racket) media marketers, press releases, trending this, random #SomeThingImportant that, all a bit indistinct. Insubstantial.
Not in an ethereal “Oh like, it’s made of binary, man” sense, but rather there’s just not much of it that matters. Matters in the sense of what results from its happening. What bit of this 4.6 billion-old hunk of rock has changed?
I dunno, maybe it’s my neck of the woods, my circle of influence, or trust, or whatever. Maybe I don’t have a social graph, maybe it’s a social flat line with an odd-shaped bump at the one end. Either way, it feels like I need a bit more analog.
Some R&R. Disconnect. Unplug. Take the fucking blue pill. Argh.
I’ve started doing more real-world things. Being creative is somehow unfulfilling when all you’ve done in a day is push pixels or herd some bytes. Making something physical that remains after the process, without the whirr of fans and distant puff of fossil fuels.
So I make blackboards, to keep me away from trying to think on a screen that just doesn’t ever seem big enough.
Even with two.
Thoughts just feel framed, divided, distracted, distorted, 2D, reduced to their digital essence, and somehow lacking any warmth. Blackboards are messy, I have chalk dust everywhere, and bits of chalk lying all over the place, and I love it. It’s child-like, it’s back to basics, it’s completely real.
There’s no spell check, no incessant drive to perfection that the digital world allows.
“Wait did I spell that right?” F7 – done. Is that fact right, Google: Answer in a halo of light, and background of choir notes. Done. Edit this, and redo that.
The constant ability to erase, and start again. Easy on, easy off. It messes with your head. You don’t think, you do. Fuck Nike. Think. Learn. Grow. Turn it off. Use paper and pen for fuck sakes.
This incessant rush of information, the ability to go anywhere, see anything, read anything, experience anything without doing anything, learn anything, or go anywhere.
It is a more alluring temptation than TV, which is just a window unto worlds we shall not see, of lives we shall not live.
I’m typing this on a laptop while lying in bed, hypocritical yes.
But such is the state of my handwriting, the level of atrophy of such a basic skill, that we spent years learning, a hallmark of civilization, that it takes forever to read what the hell I’ve written.
Oh and the next day, you might as well have written it, the meaning’s out the window, gone.
We forward emails about sick puppies, urban legends, warnings about rat feces, and free random shit.
No seriously, no one is going to give you anything for forwarding an email. There is no email genie, he’s left the building. Spam accounts for more than 80% of email sent and received.
This blog has captured a staggering 900+ spam comments. There are so many ones and zeros flying around that are interesting it would make your head explode, but that’s also in a sea of inconsequential mindless, ineffective, resource-wasting, random rubbish.
Turn off your phone, step away from your PC, and go and sit in a quiet room. The world’s best spam filter – there you have it.
Free, I just gave it to you.
I love the Internet it’s what I do. I believe it has the power to change so much. But that power is only in that it connects real things.
Real people, with real needs connected to real products or purposes.
Real-world cause and effect.
Checking inboxes, refreshing for retweets, scanning streams, IMs, and BBMs. Malignant minutiae masquerading as meaningful measures of production, of connection, of affection.
So I challenge you to unplug, disconnect, reconnect, re-experience, and rediscover. Before you become like me and rant and rave about how kids these days don’t know what they’re missing.
Do something real, and enjoy the fuck out of it.
P.S.: This piece was originally penned in 2010.* Over a decade later, I find it both intriguing and unsettling how much of it still rings true, if not more so.
The digital landscape has evolved, but the yearning for tangible, authentic experiences amidst the digital deluge remains. It’s even more urgent.
Our digital immersion has deepened with the advent of virtual, augmented, and extended realities and the rapid advancements in Generative AI crafting any fantasy or nightmare we can dream up.
Blurring the lines between digital creation and human creativity, further challenges our perceptions of digital versus analog reality.
As the boundaries between the virtual and the tangible continue to blur and collapse, how do we strike a balance between the allure of the digital and the grounding essence of the analog?
*I edited the formatting, breaking up the paragraphs because “most” Internet readers don’t like big walls of text.
Apparently.
They’re scary or something.
I'd love to disconnect - soon.
I'm writing report after report at uni right now and it's draining. The only way I get through it is by writing on campus in a boisterous learning hub. I feel like I'm vicariously in the real world when I look up from my screens and see engineers building prototype bridges and racing robots. Then I go back to my engineering degree - pushing pixels
Wow! This is a powerful piece of work, and yes, it does still resonate and then some. Among the points you made, one stood out to me. Handwriting. It literally feels difficult to me now. Even autographing a book takes concentration. And if I try to scribble something fast, not even I can come close to deciphering it. Yet I can type like a mad man. I wonder how many other people are like this?