instead of inundating my readers with the daily variety of existential crisis that any one in my predicament may find themselves on the verge of day in and day out, and clot up the blogosphere with its retelling, i thought i would share some idea i had while sitting on the stoop on this unusually warm night in the City. it’s by no means compelling or original, but perhaps worthwhile.
i have been reflecting on the nature of technology and how it has supposedly fostered interconnectedness among peoples, if you would believe the plethora of advertising that insists this is so. just take a whiff of the host of social networking sites that i am by no means immune from, which enable us to track our ‘friends” every move, purchase, relationship endeavour, even online Scrabble performance. add this to the fact that we amble about with cell phones in constant ready position to entertain the next caller. how often i’ve found myself with a spare moment to myself, only to cycle through my contact list seeking out somebody whose voice i haven’t heard in a while.
this last example aside i am left, as we all are, to ponder if rampant technological advances i’ve seen over the course of my lifetime (and perhaps you’ve seen even more in yours) have really succeeded in bringing us closer together, in truly connecting us, or has it only superficially done so and in fact driven a solid wedge between the intertwined matter of souls? does how often we check our e-mail actually bring us together, or does the fact that emotions are communicated electronically dilute the personal nature of those sentiments?
on top of all that wondering, today i feel a sort of constant throbbing in my head and tinge of sickness in my stomach, and i think it comes from staring at one too many screens, be it laptop computer, mp3 player, cell phone screen, television, et al. so i’ve contrived a sort of social experiment for myself. tomorrow i will live a day without technology. i’ve spent a good deal of time considering what this actually entails, and i think by ‘technology’ i refer to the personal electronics we rely upon to remain ‘plugged in’ to the societal mainframe (so i’m not eliminating public transit, because i need to get out of the house, and my neighborhood). basically i am just going to walk around and read books (which is what i do most of the time, anyway) and talk to strangers. i want to assess the overall feeling achieved and see if objectively i feel more ‘in touch’ with or without the technology i, like most of us, have come to depend upon.
this feeling of ‘connected’ is hard to define here in terms of a valid hypothetical goal. but i think i’m looking for genuine social contact. it will be hard to incur this feeling in my interactions with others who are not themselves temporary Luddites, but being as this is not a formal experiment but merely a whim of one i merely seek, at the end of the day, an ascertainable difference.
as i was sitting on the stoop i pondered taking this one step further, and i think i will make a point of following through with this experiment as well: i want to live one day of my life, technologically and sociologically speaking, as my parents would have when they were my age (read: imagine it is 1973/1976). this involves a bit of research into exactly what san francisco was like in those years, but i will imagine that the infrastructure is now as it would have been back then, meaning not visiting places that did not exist or riding on public transit that was not yet in place. on top of this, i will dress like my father, which should not be difficult as most of my [favourite] clothing is actually permanently borrowed from his closet. i’m excited to give this one a try, but first i will report back my findings from the former experiment before undertaking such a precise effort, which warrants more extensive documentation (read: embarassing photos and video).
i know it’s a bit of an extreme, but quite often extremes are the only things that have any impact.
