Choosing the less-efficient way of doing something, especially things we do for pleasure, can help us reassess our relationship with time and forgo the constant need for productivity....
Do you have a relationship with time? Would something analog help you restructure it? That's the idea here. Do your high-tech devices cause anxiety about how your life is slipping away as if it's nothing of any substance, and would holding a real book — smelling it, turning the pages and all that — help you reestablish yourself in reality?
Other analog things that might help:
Using a film camera to take photos that you will need to get developed, so that eventually you'll see if any of them came out decently enough to show — physically show — to another person (assuming you still have other people — actual analog people — anywhere in your analog vicinity).
Send some real letters and postcards. Wield a pen. Stick on some stamps. Notice an address that is a real place on the face of the Earth — a house number and a street name.
The article suggests collecting old magazines, and quotes one guy who buys old issues of "Popeye, a Japanese men’s magazine." We're advised we might get out our scissors and snip out pictures and glue together some sort of collage. Creative! Compared to "digital mood boards," something analog is "more immersive and powerful," yielding "new moments of synchronicity or intrigue."
Ha ha. I'm starting to wonder if this analog business is about grounding us in reality or making us even more wacky. We emerge from our all-encompassing digitality to commune with the tangible objects and we just get goofy over them in a this-means-something-this-is-important kind of way....
Back to the list of analog things that might... do whatever these analog things are supposed to do.
There are vinyl records, of course. We do vinyl here at Meadhouse. It is meaningful to hold the album covers — including some that I held in my hands when I was a teenager (talk about a relationship with time) — and to handle the discs carefully and to relive their old scratches and pops. We buy new records too — that is, new records by old Bob Dylan. It's eventful to play them.
There's also the idea of picking something — anything, preferably small and ephemeral, like matchbooks or bookmarks — and making that what you think of as a collection. It's your mind that really counts here — or, if we are to take the headline seriously, your soul. You collect these objects and mentally engage with their tangibility, invest them with meaning, and the idea is to save yourself.
The words "talisman" and "amulet" come to mind.
Posts
29 comments:
My favorite unit of time is the 'shake'. Officially according to NIST, one shake is roughly equivalent to 10 nanoseconds. It is derived from "shake of a lamb's tail". No one knows for sure who came up with the term as it relates to chain reactions, but two prominent candidates are E.O. Lawrence or Richard Feynman during the Manhattan project. It represents a cute and playful relationship with time, as well as showcasing the genius of the men who helped build the ultimate weapon.
I remember solving Schrodinger's equation on an analog computer too.
That was before the Split-Step Fourier Method took over.
Then there's sexting.
Puzzles. I enjoy sifting through the box until a piece catches my attention. For a half hour every day I focus on this one tactile experience. I don't do it because everything else in my life is digital, though. And I resent that the WaPo has anal-ogged my simple pasttime.
I suffer with handwriting due to my arthritis. But last week I wrote two (short) letters to people. I thought they would appreciate that more than a text or email. I haven't written a letter in years. I felt as if I had accomplished something worthy.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_M108B3mdY
"Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while"
Analog versus digital is different from electronic storage versus meatspace reality.
People may not be confident that they have souls, but they are probably confident that they are not digital. They are assertive or potentially assertive wills, in a world or universe (cosmos might be overdoing it) that is random or opposed to chaotic, somehow separate from other wills and from what you might call nature. There are certainly no natural standards by which to judge human actions, that was always mythical or something cooked up by self-interested priests. Environmentalists play with such a notion (respect nature, something outside us that might satisfy us with its beauty or hurt us, especially if we do something stupid) but there is really no rhyme or reason to so-called environmental policies. The will is hard to separate from desires, so analog stuff may appeal to this "emotional" side.
The trans activists have reached a new frontier. Emotional children can decide what gender they are, and demand drastic, non-reversible hormone treatments and surgeries, based entirely on their isolated wills. There is no biological or physical evidence that is relevant, including original hormones, and absolutely no one except the child has any basis on which to judge. Maybe no matter what you've done to your body, you can turn to old or new hobbies.
The reference to collecting old magazines reminds me of a coffee shop (slightly hipster) I frequented about 10 years ago. All the folks who worked there were in their 20s or early 30s, and were relaxed and friendly. I noticed they did cross words. They said they collected magazines from the 70s and 80s, and did the cross words from those, as a particular kind of challenge. That has always struck me as, I am not sure what.
i was fishing in the Smokies last Tuesday (on Noland Creek, where it flows into Fontanna lake).
I wasn't fishing digitally, on a VR machine.. So i guess it was analog (though it was More: On a log)
Anyway, the nice couple (Army vets) that were walking down with me were showing me some spots for trout, but said there was a BUNCH of Big Bass at the mouth. So i walked on down, and sure enough; there was a bunch. I started getting ready to cast, they were about to walk off;
when the lady casually said: "Oh be kinda careful.. There are a LOT of copperheads down here..
Like That One", pointing at a snake about 10 feet away, swimming Directly At Us.
"Oh, he's one of the little ones", said the man.. "He's only a couple of feet long"
The copperhead disappeared into the brush at the shoreline (maybe 6 ft away), where it probably had a home.. Didn't see him again.. Though i distractedly watched for him and his brothers
I stayed fishing for about 10 more minutes before heading upstream to the colder (less snakey) stream water.
Serious Question: If i'd been digitally fishing.. Where would the fun be in THAT???
Time, like nature in general, is an analog conceit. Mankind (humankind?) simply figured out how to make it digital, just like we figured out how to forecast hurricanes or how to predict global warming.
My favorite time unit is jiff. "Yes dear, I'll take the trash out in a jiff."
Any questions?
I am not sure it is digital versus analog so much as more and more people are doing work that involves nothing physical or tangible. Rather than read a paper book instead of a Kindle version, try playing a sport, cutting your own grass, painting your house, take up woodworking or the like. I basically read, write and argue for a living, and find that tangible work really eases my stress, plus there is a real feeling of satisfaction looking back at a physical job well-done that I don't really get from writing a good brief.
This post makes me wonder what things will be nostalgic for people who primarily interact with a digital device, mostly alone.
I have 20 typewriters, most manual, but two electrics. I became fascinated with them in 2018, for whatever reason, and have been using them to write letters to people like a lab monkey on crack ever since. I've probably written about a thousand letters by now.
I don't know why, exactly. . . .you write differently on a typewriter. The fact that you really can't go back and correct anything (except by creating multiple drafts) would, one presumes, make you contemplate more before actually committing fingers to keys, but I've found it to be the exact opposite: I just sit down and vomit words out. The very fact that I can't correct anything frees me to just throw it out there. I hardly ever even read what I've written (partly so I don't see all the typos and get all anxious). I liken it to the difference between a musical performance in a recording studio vs live.
The sound of the typebars hitting the paper. . . the Ding! at the end of a line. . .moving the carriage back manually. . .and the finished product on an actual piece of paper. . .it all just appeals to me in a way a computer doesn't.*
I have a bunch of vinyl but only play it when I feel a desire to be retro, and hear the music as it did then. Otherwise, you can pry my digital music from my cold, dead hands.
* I would dearly love to use my old clicky keyboard and monochrome screen PC-XT from 1987, but, alas, while one can easily buy a perfectly functional manual typewriter for <$100 an actual functioning old computer is both rare and $$$.
Paul Graham's 2004 'The Age of the Essay' has good analogue advice to write exploratory essays. It requires overcoming the damage done by your schooling, but it is way to slip into "the river" instead just splashing about in different places.
"Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought-- but a cleaned-up train of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up conversation. Real thought, like real conversation, is full of false starts. It would be exhausting to read. You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. But don't change so much that you lose the spontaneity of the original.
"Err on the side of the river. An essay is not a reference work. It's not something you read looking for a specific answer, and feel cheated if you don't find it. I'd much rather read an essay that went off in an unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded dutifully along a prescribed course."
"See what you can extract from a frivolous question? If there's one piece of advice I would give about writing essays, it would be: don't do as you're told. Don't believe what you're supposed to. Don't write the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects. And don't write the way they taught you to in school."
--Paul Graham, 'The Age of the Essay', September 2004
Is the soul analog? - good question for GPT-4.
I use that "this-means-something-this-is-important" line in different situations now and then.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. All these things will get lost in time, like tears in rain.
I prefer analog clocks and watch faces. I read mostly on screens but sometimes will shift to the printed page for nostalgia.
I have a copy of Pilgrim's Progress that my grandfather gave to my mother on her 12th birthday. There is a handwritten inscription inside the cover, with the date 2/13/37. It's on my night table now. Having it anchors me to people and to time.
My soul is simply my mental and emotional life. Perhaps the soul can be thought of as analog since it is a continuous stream of consciousness rather than discrete units. The soul, I'd say, is not inherently immortal, any more than the perishable body on which the soul depends.
For me, reading a tangible book is more about nostalgia than productivity.
If I use my fingers and toes to count, does it count as analog or digital, or both? (Someone ask the AI, stat!)
If it’s analog, then that means it is non-binary.
When the length of a digital value is 64 bits (even 32), an analogue voltage measurement is less accurate. I, for one, am happy that differential equations modeling the trajectory of enemy ballistic missiles are no longer solved by rotating discs that spin half spheres of stainless steel on different radii that move a pointer or turn an odometer type counter.
They both usually give about the same result though.
Analogue is just a word meaning noisy crackly audio.
Ride,
Are you aware of any connection between "shake" and "barn"?
The human soul is eternal. So maybe it becomes one of the stars in Heaven. I pick a Red Giant. Or maybe it’s one of our business. But that King of Kings guy said there are many mansions there. I hope mine is fronting on Golf courses with golden cart paths.
Your body may be digital since it began when an egg and a sperm cooperated to separate the egg into two cells, each with a a full complement of 46 chromosomes. Two cells. And from then on you built up your body by thousands upon thousands of divisions, one cell dividing into two until you have 30 to 37 trillion cells. But wait, your body may be analog. Your 37 trillion cells specialized into organs. You have 10 fingers, 10 toes, one nose. Maybe organs are analog. But wait. You have two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes, two hands, two feet. But wait. You are polarized - you have a left and a right arm. Digital bits do not have a left or right. And the left and right arms are reversed images.
Can I as a unborn child build my body as a female mammalian body, and then later repudiate it and say I am actually a male mammal though that is a body I did not build for myself? At least - can I do that if I am solely a material object? whether digital or analog?
Are you aware of any connection between "shake" and "barn"?”
No, a barn is a measure of the fictional “ cross section” of a fissile atom representing its susceptibility to fission in the presence of a neutron, justified by the phrase not being able to hit the broad side of a barn, eg. a poor shooter. A shake is how long it takes a generation of neutrons to create the second generation of neutrons in a fission chain reaction. People name things so they can talk about them.
Well it's hot as blazes this week, but I'm still clearing land, still firing up the chainsaws, and it's definitely work that qualifies in this category. All the trees I'm cutting up there's some branches in a pile here, analog there, analog there, too.
“Is the soul analog?”
No. Your brain contains 100 billion or so neurons, each one either firing or not, on or off, 1 or 0. Your “soul”, everything you think, feel, and experience, consists of this changing pattern of ones and zeroes. Also, “analog” clocks are not really analog (hear the ticking?). Try a sundial.
Post a Comment