I Wonder How Many Great Minds Are Lost to the Machine
No matter how much I’ve wanted to steer clear of it— to persist without it— there is no getting away from the dialogue of technology in the modern world. I am stubborn about it and yet I rely so much on it: I travel to a new city with intentions to navigate using maps and road signage, yet I will double check on my phone as to not waste time in the wrong direction. I get into wonderful modes of which when I stumble over a concept, my first thought is to go to my books as resources. And yet, soon enough, a laziness will keep me comfortably seated because the cell phone in my pocket is closer than the dictionary on the other side of the room. Those wonderful modes then end up floating on like a quiet creek, and, once again I fall back into the technological net.
There’s no getting around this topic when discussing the modern world— it’s influence has dominated our purchasing our connectivity our fitness our health. It has impeded on our minds; our way of researching, thinking, and coming to a conclusion. It’s also an easy claim to say that we have allowed it so… but it’s more complicated than that.
We might assume an accomplished state for ourselves if we were raised separate from the technological boom— having less of a technological reliance— more so than a younger person who was born into it. But the psychology of the latter is inextricably linked to the development of the tech exposed to them. All to say, you could just as easily have fallen into the same reliance.
It is my belief that even the greatest thinkers across our known time— if hypothetically planted into our modern world— would also succumb to the hand of technological reliance. They would fall victim to the captured attention if not fixation onto the screens, as so many people do today. I wonder if they would still marinate in their thoughts and ideas, in the face of all distractions present, and continue on to the great contributions they have added to the sciences and philosophies. I wonder how many great minds that live today are lost to the machine.
There is a war on attention and it compromises the potential in people. I used to think the challenge of living in the modern world was in the preservation of the mind and attention within this machine-society. I’ve since realized that many factors contribute to the threshold one walks between falling into the cycle and standing on their own. Injury to the brain with likely physiological change being one. Residing in an unstimulated or unchallenging environment— or lack of education being another. And ultimately, while acting as an umbrella category for the former two: poverty. It is less likely to consider ideas of ontology when you are constantly attached to the mode of survival. This is why the war on attention, often a route of escapism, holds their grip tighter on some more than others.
At the airport this morning awaiting my flight, I followed a thought to study. I then boarded the plane and pulled my book back out in order to continue. But first, I figured I should put my phone on airplane mode before I had forgotten. Then, I figured I might as well also let my family know that I boarded alright. Soon enough, it was several minutes later and I realized I was in the middle of a completely different and unrelated text message.
There was nothing ‘bad’ about any of it… it’s just that after I realized I was still on my cellphone, my former drive to study had all but went away.
A shirt I picked up traveling. The evolution of man spin-off with monkeys devolving into computer-aliens. I lost the shirt traveling and this is my only photo of it.
Author’s note: A photographer friend recently suggested I keep a journal dedicated to creative intentions and pursuits. I loved this idea so I picked one from my beloved journal collection. A lovely Italian-made green marble cover journal another friend had picked up for me (thank you, Vanessa). As the story goes, I did end up continuing my studies on the plane. I was reading the Aperture series book on Mary Ellen Mark’s works, an environmental portrait photographer, whose pictures had stunned me to silence. I then penned an entree in that creative journal trying to break an ambition of mine into somewhat more attainable parts: what will get me closer to my goals of pursuing the photographic essay?
I knew I felt good when studying, and that the photographic essay requires creativity and logic alike. I concluded that if I were to establish a practice writing short essays, it would lead naturally into the photographic essay… also to (hopefully) giving up the idea of perfection that has admittedly been holding me back.
Anyways, here’s my first thought-post, and we’ll see how it goes.
