Connectivity and beyond

Photo credit: Marianne Møllmann

This summer, on one of those infernally hot days, a friend and I went to the beach to cool off in the North Sea. Our electric car only just had enough battery to get us to the beach, but we depended on there being a charging station nearby.

This assumption was false.

In what seemed almost humourous (though maybe not at the time), every charging station on our online map turned out to be a red herring. At some point we reached the identified spot in the middle of a country road, almost literally in the fields. At another, the map seemed to direct us to turn into a closed-down lumber yard. That is when we saw large charging stations across the road at a regular tank station, which is where we ultimately plugged ourselves in.

Even at the time I found the situation deliciously ironic. Almost out of juice, trying to identify a way to recharge online, only to find that we really should have relied on our other, more human, senses all along. I am sure I don’t have to connect the dots for you.

What stands out for me today is the narrowness that comes with relying on computer generated “efficiency”. As Brenda Ueland famously wrote, the “people who are always briskly doing something […] have little sharp, staccato ideas […] but they have no big ideas”. Of course, this was written in the late 1930s, so likely more related to the efficiencies that arose from the industrial revolution and less from the manner in which AI and other tech-based tools have eliminated raw creativity and exponentially sped up our lives. As a wise person said to me some days ago, AI generates perfect, but deeply uninteresting, prose. So it is with our lives. We can tech-optimise ourselves towards perfection, but is it interesting?

I am writing this on the journey back home after a month. During this time, I have travelled from one end to the other on the modernity spectrum. I have stayed in a cabin in the woods with no running water or electricity, and I have gotten lost in the largest shopping mall in the world. In the cabin, I was fully present. In the mall, I did everything I could to keep my mind at bay. And yet I know that modern technology is what has kept me connected to my husband and adult child throughout, for which I am deeply grateful.

There is no real news in this. We, most of us, already know the connectivity we achieve through technology is miraculous and also no match for the real thing.

Now if only we dared to live our lives accordingly.