Why Do We Like Machines So Much?
A little consideration for balance in a digital world.
Dear Reader,
I sat at the corner of a cafe in the city, people walking here and there on the other side of the windows. People walking here and there, with a phone in their hands. People sat with a laptop on their table, a tablet and a stylus, even in the middle of a conversation.
While watching this, I remembered hearing about the lore of Dune.
Yes that Dune. Frank Herbert wrote about Thinking Machines, his version of AI, that humans came to depend on, after which a war broke out to remove it from humanity. Which left them with a huge gap in quality of life.
Now, I’m not saying we’re about to have a war against the machines, but it looks like we like them just a little too much. And when you like something, when it’s convenient for you, you use it to fill gaps it didn’t need to fill, and now you can’t function without it.
Consider this: we wake up in the morning, the alarm is on our phones. We then check our phones, before maybe turning on the TV or the radio (usually also on our phones) or Youtube or Spotify on our devices, to give us some morning background music, or a podcast, or an audiobook. Then we turn on our computers, or get in our cars to go off to work. Then we intermittently check our phones, before getting home and back on our TV’s for some streaming.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing to do, I do it every day. I just wonder if we can ever find balance in an age of convenience?
Do I want a physical alarm clock, if I have to wind the little hand to change my alarm every now and again, when I want to sleep in? Or risk getting woken up at 8am every day?
Do I want to phase out my multiple screens, which makes life so much easier when writing, to just reduce how much I intake every day? Can I actually stand my beat sheets being physical? What if I decide to write in a cafe, and I don’t have them?
Do I really want to, after a long day of running around, not turn on the TV and read a book or do a puzzle instead?But the TV is the most relaxing of all, it takes the least effort?
I don’t think we can. I consider the price of a CD player nowadays, the cost of CD’s and radio’s. I consider the low quality of radio shows, and how limited they are. I consider a brick phone, but I have no sense of direction.
I need the convenience. I like it.
Now I try to track when we began liking machines so much? Is it when computers became portable? That was around in the early 80’s. How about when phones became portable? That was in the 1970’s.
We like to pretend that the technological boom is happening right now. But it’s not. It has been steadily happening in waves, rippling through society from the 1970’s. From the computer arrived in the form of an Analytical Engine in the 1830’s to Code Breaking in 1943 to now.
The working woman in the 1980’s (yes I’m using Working Girl as a reference here) had a computer in her little cubicle. She had a landline phone. She also picked up magazines and a newspaper on her way to work, so she could be a well articulated, well referenced young woman. Now, to do the same thing, I’d scroll on social media, not even referring to reputed news sites.
As I sat in this cafe, I looked down at my own table. Purposely, to avoid lugging around my laptop, I’m writing the first draft of a Substack on paper. Just in my little notebook for scribbles. Beside it is my diary, it actually doesn’t have my calendar in it, it’s for keeping forever, to outline what I have done in the year, the books I have read, the places I visited, and the people I saw. The Calendar is in an app called iCal on my phone, which sits on top of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Mews.
I look closer at the suited gentleman next to me, he’s in his fifties it seems, and he’s scrolling on his phone with one hand, but in his other hand is a newspaper, half hidden under the table. The ladies who are chatting on my other side are both looking at a video, laughing heartily with each other. The young woman, well dressed by the door has Maps open on her phone, I understand that, Melbourne’s confusing, I’m glad she found this cafe, it’s good.
It strikes me that the world is quite balanced. That we do like machines for another reason, it’s not just the convenience, it connects us. If I read a cool book, I take a photo to share it with you all here and on social media. If I see a cool movie, I message my friends to talk it over. It’s a gift as much as it is a curse, and it’s up to us to find a balance.
I’m still working on that balance, but I think we’ll be okay.
Recommended Reading:
No, I will not turn my brain off - on AI and brainpower in today’s age.
An Ode to Changes of All Kinds - on things changing at home while you travel.
Five Literature Classics in Review - Gaskell, Austen and more in review.
Now, you have got me thinking about how much I am dependent on the gadgets around me to fill the silence. Something, we all ought to be doing less. Great one, Rubi. I loved it.
A really good post. For me, I started purchasing newspapers so I can at least consume news from physical paper, and it was really good. I started thinking more instead of consuming one news and then, in one scroll, going to another without giving time to think.