The Art of Disconnect…
…or why I have neglected the old blog here for the last two months and quit Twitter.
Back in January, Arianna Huffington was interviewed by Prospect Magazine and made a comment about the need “to disengage from our 24/7 connectivity.” She went on to explain that constantly being locked into the rest of the world has hampered our “inner wisdom”. Why is this important?
For many of us, most of these connections are never fleshed out in physical life and most of our time is ticked away tied to our screens—whether they be that of laptops, desktops, cameras, or the computer/video/stereo/phone device in your pocket. I am guilty of this myself: as a writer, much of my time is spent looking at the glowing rectangle with its bluish glow casting shadows on the walls while I work into the late hours of the night. I spend equal amount of time burning out my corneas handling work for the studio and cranking through the wonders of academia. It’s enough to make your head explode.
If we never unhook ourselves from the constant stream of information, will there not come a time when we no longer distinguish between wholesome information and filler information—the digital equivalent of a home-cooked meal versus fast food? What if there is simply too much data to imbibe on a daily basis between the Crackberry and fifty million social platforms to glean from? Ironically enough, we get to a point wherein we actually feel guilty for taking time away from reading the blogs, checking the email, and tending to our online selves. How is it viable to feel guilty for pulling out of these things if we are then nurturing our physical lives and in-person relationships?
Life is more than a virtual thread connecting you to another person, another life. I quit Twitter a couple of months ago because it no longer added anything to my physical life. Snippets of jokes, anecdotes, and news links were great, but most of my information consumption is streamlined these days by way of Tumblr, Google Reader, and Facebook. More is not better when it comes to information—less is spectacular.
If we cultivate our tangible lives, we might not spend so much time logged in to our digital ones. We might spend more time writing books, getting outside, travelling, and having the conversations of which fragments usually end up on Facebook anyway.
Access for Everyone?
Some of us don’t actually possess phones with internet access or pushed email.
For the vast majority of people on this planet, acquiring the latest gadget is still out of reach due to costs. Until my brief tenure in advertising a couple of years ago, as much as I may have wanted a PDA (as they were once known), I couldn’t afford one and was therefore separated from an entire movement that has now transformed how we, as a global community, communicate and live. After my layoff from said job as corporate hustler last year, I had to relinquish my beloved Crackberry and went back to utilizing my very basic and entirely acceptable Tracphone. It wasn’t such a tragedy, but with the evolution of smartphones, I couldn’t help but feel out of the loop.
Anyone that’s involved in any shape or form in the digital world recognizes the strides that smartphones, web apps, and internet innovation are taking. What is new today will be old news within a matter weeks. In places such as India or the many countries of Africa, people are using their phones for far more than just email or bullshit web games—they pay for groceries with a swipe of the phone, for example. We use these applications to share moments, conversations, photos, data, and more. Organization of higher education often takes place only via online portals—from applying to school to registering for classes to turning in exams. Many people are only available through the online world.
Once upon a time, knowledge equaled power. Now, it is the access to knowledge that equals power. So what happens to those that don’t have the financial means to acquire that access? Are we left behind and looked upon in the same manner that the homeless or Dalit are? Throwaways? I recently invested in a Crackberry again and while it’s not the latest model, it opened up that world again for me. How do we do this for the people for whom the costs remains beyond their means? If technology is the framework of the world, how do we make it accessible to everyone?
