So I had a little loose money in my pocket and couldn’t decide what to do with it. As it turns out, it seemed like a new Blootoof was a good idea (new law kicks in this summer; hands-free only in the Golden State) and so were my ridiculous new blue shades.
Naturally, as soon as I have spent my walking-around money, I start thinking of things I wish I could run right out and buy, to wit, e.g.; viz:
* Seersucker jacket (stop laughing! STOP IT!)
* New Timbuk2 Coder bag
* New water bottle (because the FIRST FIVE aren’t cutting it?)
* New big Timbuk2 backpack suitable for carry-on and taking abroad
* New duct-tape-wrapped Moleskine Cahier and 0.38mm G2 pens
I think a lot of the problem is exacerbated by the big feature piece in this week’s Economist, all about mobile technology. They go on a bit about the transformative power of the mobile phone (see my post from December about the MOTOFONE F3) and discuss the growth of digital nomadism, warning about the danger zone in which “you can work anywhere” tips into the realm of “you must work everywhere.” And the thing is…I want to be a digital nomad. I want to be able to work from the coffee shop, from the back deck of the pub, from the cigar shop, to do everything off a MacBook and a cell phone. I want, as McClellan Pope did, to have my headquarters where my hindquarters should be. (Look it up, Yankee. I had to.) In short, I want to *need* the stuff that I merely *want*.
The whole suite of articles also made an interesting argument that I hadn’t seen before. We all know that the Internet has a way of making things more self-referential, making it possible to get your news and see your friends and only ever see the stuff you really want to see (which is one reason I’ve tried to make an effort to broaden my political readings the last couple of months). However, the writer makes the case that unlimited technology tends to strengthen the strong social ties (you can be in touch with your friends constantly, even across a continent or two) at the expense of the weak ties (your Twittering from the cafe in the Rue Cler comes at the expense of striking up a conversation with the couple at the next table who have the County Wexford GAA shirts on). Consequently (inventing my own term here), what we’re seeing is not the atomization of society, but the molecularization of society. Tiny clumps of our own kind, at best loosely associated and at worst completely unbonded to larger things.
I don’t know about all this. What I do know is that the five years prior to my first Net access were an unmitigated disaster, and that pretty much anything good that has happened in my life since has ultimately derived from being online. So is that the tradeoff? Are we giving up large-scale structure in order to make sure that the few rogue atoms find somewhere to bond? And ultimately, are we more worried about the health of the compound or the health of the atoms?