alexis lloyd

An excerpt from E.B. White’s New Yorker essay, “The World of Tomorrow”, in which he responds to the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair. His thoughts are not only beautifully articulated in classic E.B. White style, but the questions and concerns he raises have a great deal of relevance in our current approaches to technology and our always-connected lives.

The countryside unfolds before you in $5-million micro-loveliness, conceived in motion and executed by Norman Bel Geddes. The voice is of utmost respect, of complete religious faith in the eternal benefaction of faster travel. The highways unroll in ribbons of perfection through the fertile and rejuvenated America of 1960 — a vision of the day to come, the unobstructed left turn, the vanished grade crossing, the town which beckons but does not impede, the millennium of passionless motion. When night falls in the General Motors exhibit and you lean back in the cushioned chair (yourself in motion and the world so still) the soft electric assurance of a better life — the life which rests on wheels alone — there is a strong, sweet poison which infects the blood. I didn’t want to wake up. I liked 1960 in purple light, going a hundred miles an hour around impossible turns ever onward toward the certified cities of the flawless future. It wasn’t until I passed an apple orchard and saw the trees, each blooming under a canopy of glass, that I perceived that even the General Motors dream, as dreams often do, left some questions unanswered about the future. The apple tree of tomorrow, abloom under its inviolate hood, makes you stop and wonder. How will the little boy climb it? Where will the little bird build its nest?

There has been a lot of reaction to the piece published in the Times earlier this week about the negative effects of multitasking and hyperconnectivity. Most of it has been either been further hand-wringing over how much of a problem this is, or a rejection of the idea that there is any problem to begin with.

I was happy to see this piece today, in which a number of contributors from different disciplines present actual, constructive ideas for how to create more balance and “unplugged” space. None of the ideas are particularly radical - most are of the “just control yourself” variety - but I appreciated the focus on solutions rather than problems.

First Steps to Digital Detox

An interesting thing I noted is that one of the authors compared cutting down on technology use to dieting: i.e., it’s difficult and unpleasant in the short-term but rewarding in the long term. I thought this comparison was striking, as it is fairly well-documented that people can’t really sustain dieting behaviors in the long term. It’s just too hard. Will the same hold true for technology? Will the gratification of the immediate rewards overwhelm our attempts at self control? Intuitively, I think not. I personally find there are great immediate (as well as long-term) rewards to unplugging — a sense of relief and peace and quiet — in a way that there aren’t for eating a salad. But then again, maybe I’m just not very addicted to connectivity… 

(Also, in the comments for this article, someone recommended the current Adbusters issue entitled “The Whole Brain Catalog” as another good read on the topic. While I haven’t gotten to read the whole issue yet, there are a couple of articles from it available on their website.)

About once a year or so, I revisit the amazing Lore Sjöberg’s Ratings. He spent several years in the late ’90s / early ’00s writing ratings and reviews of pretty much anything you can imagine, from Korean snack foods to aspects of bowling to pasta shapes. He used to publish these regularly on the now-defunct Brunching Shuttlecocks website, but luckily you can still read most of them on the Book of Ratings site. Here are a couple of excerpts to entice you:

From the ratings of keyboard symbols:

@ (commercial a)
Okay, incredibly important point here: To anyone who’s spent enough time on the Internet to get cold chills when receiving mail with the subject “Very Funny! Read!”, the commercial a is pronounced “at.” So those clever motherfuckers among you who come up with spelling like “One-D@y Am@zing De@l S@le,” are subjecting us to a mental pronunciation that comes out like “One Datee Amatzing Deattle Sattle.” Stop it. B

And filed under “Phone Features”:

Flash
This is much less exciting than it sounds. Phones could flash in so many interesting ways that it’s a pity they use the word to mean “hang up then stop hanging up real quick-like.” I understand this feature is real handy for those with call waiting, but my loathing for call waiting is so great that I consider that a negative, kind of like pointing out that a given dog food can also be used to raise giant infectious death geckos. C