You are correct. I would also add: the Luddites had a point.
all of our technologies
are supposedly
to enable us to have
unfettered freedom to express ourselves
AND
to make our lives easier...
but
i don't feel that way
sure, it's easier to find information
download an ebook
seek out a video on a topic
write a strongly worded opinion on many platforms
BUT
i feel like our level of engagement suffers
from the digital medium
it's as if there's this buffer
between
the reality of the information materially
and my relationship to it in the digital space
when i write something down
| P H Y S I C A L L Y |
(as i am doing now to draft this piece)
i feel MUCH more
c--o--n--n--e--c--t--e--d
to the subject
and the thought and feelings i am trying to convey
it is a curious thing
because, rationally
looking at it
i've merely swapped a keyboard
for a pen
but, somehow
it's
(((~PHYSICALITY~))) the feel of the pen in my hand the smooth, lined notebook paper against my wrist the ink flowing like a subtle stream to the page the wind blowing grains of sand accross the page as i write on the beach ...it all culminates in a more profound sense of << \e n g a g e m e n t/ >>
with this wrestling of ideas
and
the overall writing process
thia understanding of the
digital/analog creative divide
has lately led me to believe
that what we consider
'convienence'
is really a straight-jacket
for our creative liberty
don't misunderstand me
i am no luddite
our technologies are powerful tools
and can facilitate our creativity in many
\\ won~der~ful //
ways
BUT
i believe we have to recognize
and utilize it's strengths and weaknesses
to OUR advantage
take this post for example:
channeled through a pen to a notebook and then typed on a smartphone touch-screen and finally submitted to midnight pub to transmit it to a wider audience for reading and discussion
the pen and journal to better
elucidate and facilitate my thoughts
the phone and internet
to bring those thoughts to the world
...true liberty for the low cost of a small loss of convienence
gemini://wolfinthewoods.pollux.casa/
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You are correct. I would also add: the Luddites had a point.
truth
also:
had to have been fun
absolutely
/wR/ec\KiN|\g/
a 19th c. factory line
don't threaten me with
a good time
When you have a boat, it makes sense to float it in a way seemingly best possible at the time, otherwise the floating never happens.
All I know is entropy has mocked all my word preservation attempts.
So now I just grab and use whatever is nearest, knowing the seeming urgency will once again soon enough fade, the media will become corrupted and/or lost, and I'll once again find I've moved on past and beyond former understandings represented in/by past word preservations.
I mean, goshsakes, I'm going to pass, so why shouldn't inapplicable word hoardings?
true
but many times it's useful to know
whether to
use a sailboat
or a yacht
if i'm tacking the small inlets and shoreline
a small sailboat will do
but if i need to get out to the deep sea
i'm taking a yacht
Absolutely love this and can resonate with this. I don't consider myself a Luddite as well and believe tech (overall) has been beneficial, seeming almost like magic if we compare even just the last 100 years of evolution. But...
You're right too. We've disconnected. It's strange too, because I grew up with a computer most of my life, but us handing over everything we do to a computer (or phone, tablet, etc.) can be frankly exhausting and unreliable. Things that are meant to be convenient or save time no longer do that when we can no longer connect with our daily tasks. It's actually why I try to avoid using my laptop or phone most days and stick to my computer. Therefore, at least when I want to do something that's not directly related to my work and/or personal affairs and/or gaming (like writing, drawing, reading, etc.), I can disengage properly.
i wrote a piece on the ephemeral nature of
writing online over on my gemlog
you might find it interesting:
gemini://wolfinthewoods.pollux.casa/gemlog/2024_04_28_no_ghosts_in_themachine.gmi
I feel exactly this way. This is the reason that I cannot, for the life of me, bring myself to do any of that digital notetaking. I have been copying, by hand, the yijing to a notebook I bought for it, when it would be a lot easier to just copy-paste it to a text file to keep for reference.
Part of it is that I find electronics to be completely unrealiable. At any moment they may bust. Of course, paper may get soaked, or burn, just as well. But I still feel more things could go wrong with computers, and it still requires other computers to retrieve data from a hard drive. Now with our "blackbox" devices that make it even harder to retrieve the storage that's inside a device...
There is another benefit. Copying the text by hand implies I have to read it while I do. Even if I don't understand most of it (it's classical chinese), I still get to read it and more or less try to make sense of it as I do. If I simply copy-paste the thing, sure it's a lot quicker, but I may never actually see the text, because I'm not making myself read it. I may wait forever until my grasp of classical chinese is good enough...
Also if I go to the river and I want to write my thoughts, I'd look like a sucker taking out my laptop there. And writing on a touchscreen is torture. Even if it weren't, I wouldn't want to be dealing with a screen /at all/ when I'm out in nature. I would like to be less screen-bound and spend more time outside, in the river, in the mountain looking over the distance, on the beach, or wherever. I don't want to be looking at a screen, at all.
oooh, classical chinese, very nice
there was a brief time where i was enthralled
by ancient chinese culture
and texts including the i-ching
i still read some, mostly taoism related stuff
yeah, if i am writing something down as i read
a text i can more easily recall it and access that
knowledge
which science has proven is the case overall
with knowledge retention
in fact, i read an article recently that mentioned
that students had a better grasp of material
when they engaged with a physical medium
like a book versus a digital text
I agree 100%! I remember the Offline series on The Verge with Paul Miller that I always found to be the best written stuff online in x number of years. Personal experience essays about life offline in NYC, for a full year, writing them (offline) and having an editor publish the stories online. The writing, itself, is what matters - exploratory, sincere, or even sacrificial in the context. I was so pumped when a new article came out. Forever a favorite :)
oh sweet, thanks for the lead
i just found the archive of the articles
definitely will be reading through them soon