'Summer was gone when the heat died down
And Autumn reached for her golden crown
I looked behind as I heard a sigh
But this was the time of no reply...' ~ Nick Drake, Time of No Reply
* * *
The weather has finally been changing in London, over the past few
weeks. That was without a doubt the hottest Summer I can remember,
aside from a few hazy childhood memories. For the past few months
I've been lucky enough to have only really been working a couple days
a week, and even though I'd created that time (by quitting one of the
two jobs I was working earlier this year) for 'productive' reasons,
in the end I couldn't help myself but just make the most of the
beautiful Summer months - lots of outdoor swimming, cycling, camping,
reading outdoors, falling asleep under the shade of trees in the
park, etc. No regrets. Time well spent.
I had quit my other job to free up time to try and put towards some
self-learning projects; mainly learning some programming but also
just even more-so improving my computing knowledge/skills: linux
systems, the bash/zsh shells, sysadmin stuff, etc (I'm still an
amateur, and my work not really being anywhere in this field means I
only approach this stuff in an out-of-hours, hobbyist capacity).
Since the weather turned colder I have been getting into programming,
but I was never kidding myself that this would be a quick thing to do
- and it's not like I'm doing this for employment reasons so much as
just a personal passion to finally crack into software in this way
and see where it leads, either creatively or just in the sense of DIY
computing and an extension of the path that led me away more and more
from so many Web services, platforms and social networks, and back
closer to the terminal in computing - and also right here, towards
plaintext.
One thing I've been realising in the time I've been browsing here is
that there's a real process of 'unlearning' going on with me.
Unlearning the rhythms and impact and even affective qualities of
many communication Web technologies (microblogs, platforms, social
networks, etc) and easing into this calmer, what I think is a more
considered speed; this flow of text syncing up with the pace of my
mind more-so than the Tweetdeck columns that I'd once thought were so
useful, a few years back, now looking more like Tetris on some
super-fast & stressful high level, all the things that capture your
attention falling fast and hitting hard.
I have far more time for the 'federated' model of microblogging
compared to the other mega-platform social networks, but at this
stage I remain a little bit unconvinced, largely by the gaze/focus
that some of those platforms seem designed to veer towards: Web-based
social networks in the way we've been using/developing them this past
decade-or-so play into some very similar tendencies around the
presentation of identity, popularity, gamification, visible metrics,
etc. That's not to be too down on those other networks - I think its
great to depart from the major players and explore difference and
more decentralised models, and to try and determine what we want from
these networks. And that's perhaps why I found it easy to firstly
move towards federated cyberspace, but then actually to keep the
momentum going and keep moving, ending up more-so in gopherspace, in
one regard, but also even more offline/disconnected in other ways.
I'm less 'online' than I have been over the past few years, less
occupied by social networks and shiney Web stuff; unlearning and
walking away from those tendencies. And this is starting to open up a
much more preferable - much more 'me' - headspace and also freeing up
time.
* * *
It's a fresh Autumn morning in London. Golden sunlight and calm.
Fresh-brewed coffee and blue skies, broken only by the trailing white
lines of flight paths.
