A normal person from 20 years ago looks like a monk today. Remembering life before the digital age.
And perhaps in 20 years this scatter brained state will look idyllic. We’ve spent a long time pursuing the idea that more information, that more connection leads to more understanding, but it doesn’t.
The lifestyle of a normal person from 20 years ago seems positively monk-like today.
The lifestyle of someone from 30 years ago seems like a forest-monk. That’s how far our sense of normal has been pushed.
2002 is 20 years ago, which is roughly a generation.
Even my generation, which technically remembers this time, doesn’t really remember.
We have offloaded so much of our imagination to these devices that we literally can’t imagine a world without them. But there was.
Today someone living that lifestyle would look insane, but that’s really a case of the world going mad more than anything else.
Before The Digital Age
I still remember being hopelessly lost (no maps), I remember being completely bored.
I remember not being able to answer questions, not being able to scratch every itch that troubled my brain folds. And I remember not being able to talk to someone because they weren’t home.
I remember waiting, and planning ahead, and yet I don’t remember these things being inconvenient at all. It’s more that modern conveniences made them inconvenient.
In many ways our conveniences rule over us, We can scratch any itch, and yet we’re somehow itchy all the time.
We keep piling on more and more information from every corner of the globe without ever looking at what’s in front of us.
We stray further and further from the monastic to the spastic, thinking we’re getting more enlightened and we’re not.
The phones light up, but the faces in front of them remain dim.
Our city lights blot out the stars, 24/7 news blots out history, and buildings blot out nature.
We live in a fallen age, thinking we’re rising.
Technology is useful. Use technology but don’t let it use you.
