A pondering from 2019, pre covid
It was just called a.txt and lived in a home directory on a less visited
machine. Maybe it's worth sharing?
a.txt:
I am concerned that we may have lost ourselves,
the time in which I grew up was exceedingly interesting,
as I am certain it was for most who got to grow up.
The 90s was a digital time
For something to be what it is, its opposite must exist too.
In the 90s, anlogue existed as the thing that was opposite
to digital, being quickly replaced, on its way out.
It was not entirely a technological change. It was a cultural
one too, as we moved somewhat further away from the material
world into a metastate. Our bodies inhibiting the old world,
struggeling to upload our culture and our mind, moving into
a different plane of existence.
It was exciting
and we scrambled to catch up, maybe we didn't have time
to grab on to everything we owned, maybe we did but found
no place to put it in our new worlds.
Maybe we've forgotten what it was
A photograph has changed, it became an image file, then
it became an image. It gained new properties, it could be
endlessly and with luck, perfectly replicated and distributed.
But it lost something that maybe everything lost
It lost us, it lost human connection,
when it vanished from paper it lost being held,
it lost the human hand holding it to be looked at,
it lost its place in the physical world,
in the wallet of a loving parent,
in the pocket of someone with a secret crush.
It lost being a medium for shared experience,
being passed around. Maybe sitting together
in front of a tablet and sharing that experience
is exactly the same, but maybe it is not. Maybe
it lost being the only one, or one in a few.
Maybe it lost being lost, and cherished.
Maybe it lost the ability to be missed.
Its physicality may tie it to our minds in a different way.
The physical connection
The object, may have inherent properties for which there are
only weaker substitutes if any at all.
This change may cause us to change our perception
to something potentially less rich.
Can we even remember the world which we escaped from?
If we could have seen our future with those eyes from
back then, would we have wished for it or would we
have done all we could think of to avoid it?
What have we lost ? Depth, maybe. Wide ranges.
Vast distances.
