Reality Distortion Field

American Tobacco

This morning, as I drank my coffee and scrolled through my Facebook feed, I was struck by all that is wonderful and terrible about the Internet. To be sure, there is much to love, and much to despise. There is the sharing, the community, the communication, the mingling of ideas that creates new things that we never imagined.

The Watchmen

Then there is the chain-mail aspect, the rapid dissemination of misinformation and mistruth, the rampant lack of fact-checking, the outright lies and technological delusions. I can riff on Wikipedia for hours, following links down, down, down into the rabbit hole–I do not claim to be somehow above this phenomenon.

Shadow Dining

I think it’s increasingly important, though, to get our heads out of our devices, our bodies out of our chairs, out into the world. I believe there is great importance in the internet and in technology generally–I am no luddite. Still, I can’t ignore the collective de-evolution that we subject ourselves to when we start taking everything we see at face value, as it’s presented to us in real time in a convenient newsfeed.

Love Yourself

Often times, the things you read seem plausible, possible, even probable. It makes sense, you might think to yourself, though there is something almost imperceptibly off about it–something that you can’t quite put your finger on that maybe just doesn’t seem quite real. The appearance of truth, subtly distorted, as if you are looking through very old glass.

I’m not here to tell you what to do, or what to believe, or that the internet is evil, or anything like that. I am blogging this, after all, with digital images on an Apple Macbook Pro–I am as much a part of this world as anyone else. And I make sure to include my child in this world, as well, as it is the world and tools that he will inherit, and I want to make sure he knows how to operate within whatever reality the future holds.

Still, sometimes we take the opportunity to unplug, to enjoy the analog, to live in the now, with sand or grass or asphalt beneath our feet. We watch airplanes and butterflies, we search for crayfish in the Eno River. We take photos with a Holga and look forward to developing the film–we understand that each frame is precious, singular, and unrepeatable.

Approaching Liftoff

Balance, moderation, consideration–these are, I think, keys to a full and informed life. The yin and the yang, the dark and the light. We have always sought for technology to free rather than enslave.

Don’t let the internet enslave you.