exotic analog world
before smartphones,
what was the first thing we did when we woke up?
how did we go places we've never been?
(especially without ratings! you just had to go TRY IT ; and you didn't know about ALLLLLL the restaurants in your area, you had to go explore the world for yourself...it wasn't all mapped out with every single ATM and ...oh shit, how did people locate ATMs? sharp eyes? sharper eyes for sure...)
what did we do when we were somewhere outside our homes and we were bored?
did we feel more bored more often?
(no somehow i recall not really being that bored...i spent summers reading and playing with friends and playing music and drawing and swimming and going places with my grandma and talking to my grandpa and visiting the library which was always such a treat because we had such a nice library, it was an enticing place for a kid to be)
before ipods,
how much music did we listen to? HOW DID WE STAVE OFF BOREDOM?
before cellphones,
how did we get ahold of each other?
landlines i guess but say your parents needed to pick you up from school and they're on their way and they're running late? how would they let you know?
one time my grandpa was terribly late and i just started walking home, thinking maybe he'd forgotten about me and on my way home, i saw him biking to get to me. he had taken a nap and forgotten.
i remember we'd have tea together everyday. i liked a strong brew of green tea. i liked it bitter. we'd drink that together after he brought me back from school. we'd listen to the radio together for comedy programs
he would tell me bedtime stories and he GOT TIRED OF TELLING ME THE SAME STORIES OVER AND OVER! my favorite was snow white so he recorded himself on cassette and i was to listen to this tape forever and ever. i wish i had it now. fuck. i wish i had it.
before social media,
how did people stay in contact?
they didn't. and i don't really have social media so i don't really have contact with anyone -- but it's somehow...ok. you keep talking to the people who you want to talk to
before the internet full of stuff,
what did we do for fun after school/work?
TV! sitcoms! dramas! series! we spent a lot of hours watching commercials.
even though i came from that world, it now seems endlessly exotic and fun to me to "navigate" through "challenges" and "obstacles" of a "tech-less" world
some of the ways we lived is no longer accessible except through pointed and willful effort (such as buying cassette tapes and floppy disks)
and the problem is, i know how it is to be a kid without modern technology but i don't know how it is to be an adult without modern technology...fuck it, i don't behave like an adult anyway. i'll take some kid solutions.
i want to try to imagine a world NOW without things:
without
- smartphone: i wake up journaling and then get up, make some tea, maybe read something and -- OH SHIT DO YOU REMEMBER HARD COPY MAGAZINES? i miss those...they were such a treat to get in the mail...when i was a teenager i liked teen vogue, cosmopolitan, seventeen, nat geo kids ; then when i was a late-teenager i liked women's health. this is one of those things that makes me want to make just an itty bitty exception and kill some trees because the dopamine-spike of getting magazines in the mail is delirious and splendid. also i learned of ergodic literature and i want a hard copy of horrorstör and S. (or something like S. -- like same concept but maybe a tad less work) ; i might go visit like a bookstore or something. but this is me imagining myself living in a house somewhere semi-permanently...i'm in a little italian town now and the bookstore here is not impressive [YOU KNOW, WEIRDLY, MODERN TECHNOLOGY ALLOWS US TO BE LIKE "OVER" THE WHOLE "CAPITALISM THING" because with technology we think we can get shit for free online ; we think we can be self-sustaining on our boat because we have solar and lithium and water-makers... but is that self-sustaining? hmm i mean that is total reliance on technology...we don't even know how to sail without minute by minute weather models -- but before this kind of technology, people were so bored and so eager to go to bookstores and record stores and people were so happy to go to a NICE BIG bookstore -- we think we're too good for that shit now, too good for tree pulp books and stores but...imagine the boredom back then] i remember buying a book on japanese and just doing exercises by myself lol i remember trying to draw portraits (and then getting pretty good at it!! the faces were...RECOGNIZABLE!!!) and playing the piano (i tried to play victor's piano solo) and doing origami and clay things. ok but focus, FOCUS, what would i do now, right now in italy on a boat? i guess i could read and do japanese lessons in my textbook and play the guitar and write stories and talk with my friends and play board games with them and cook from like, cookbooks... ; i really want to go rock climbing and camping though
- ipods/podcasts -- fuuck imagine just going on a run raw-dog. imagine going on a walk without anything speaking to you in your ears. ahh the pain!! ummm...maybe bring a friend. yeah.
- cellphones -- easy, i don't use the phone function anyway
- social media -- so i'd be out of the loop on whatsapp but it's whatever. i don't think i'd miss it
- internet full of stuff -- i guess mainly youtube and google. google makes it too easy for you/me to like ask questions we don't really need the answers to and youtube makes it easy for you to kind of stay there for hours because you're a goddamn visual creature and you're also a curious creature. honestly the best thing that youtube has ever given me is nutritional inputs via cooking videos. it's very helpful to HEAR food being cooked to understand like at what level of hotness you need to be throwing shit in. it's more informative and enjoyable than cookbooks. the other best thing is patrick beach yoga videos.
i think i wanna do "high tech-free" days where i put my smartphone and computer in a drawer and i must make do with my kindle and remarkable (which, let's be real, are basically just paper products that don't kill trees so)
regarding my idea to buy a flip phone -- which costs a whopping TWENTY DOLLARS which doesn't sound like a lot to most people but i'm a sailor and i like to save money so i can spend it on necessary things ; i haven't spent money anything other than food and laundry in the past month EXCEPT like two books on my kindle...also a boat is a small space so it's very discouraging in terms of buying shit, every item counts -- i think i will do the responsible thing for now and just not add yet another device to my life. and fuck light phones. they are so fucking expensive. (but i want one. if i'm being real honest. if someone gave me one for free i'd take it and find the space on the boat and in my life for it)
today i want to sort through my music.
i want to use a third-party to organize my spotify library by genre
spotify is one of those things i hate most about 2024 technology. like it works...but just barely. and they keep programming all sorts of useless features into it.
i just want: genre, artist, date added, song title, album.
chill the fuck out with the "vibes" and the "moods" like nobody listens to that shit. and stop with the videos it's embarrassing how much you're trying to copy tiktok. also youtube, stop with the shorts, it's also embarrassing. it's like when the hot (but also ratchet) girl at school comes in with her hair dyed pink so the second-tier "almost popular" semi-hot girls do the same thing. stop it's really embarrassing.
i think the cool thing about 2024 is that you can choose to go hybrid analog if you want to.
i think that is becoming The Thing now anyway
The Thing is usually a thing that is an idea by a wave of people who literally enjoy that idea and proposed the idea as a solution to their problems OR as a way to make their lives better
The Thing usually then becomes a clichéd set of characteristics, rules and behaviors mindlessly adopted by the masses in order to "fit in"
The Thing used to be like meditation and yoga and now every basic bitch does this and they try to act like they "get it" on the surface by learning a set of lingo to buy their membership. who fucking cares. the people who started this thing are still doing The Thing but they don't do it Like That. and they don't care about being in the club.
IS PROGRESS ALWAYS A GOOD THING?
progress is not linear ; our problem -- our FOLLY -- is thinking that progress means going straight in one direction when really progress is circular
people of the past tried to do less physical labor, tried to eat more luxurious things (meat, chocolate...etc.)
people of today try to do more physical labor (you see celebrities fucking flipping tires), try to eat less luxurious things (going back to multigrains)
in the early 2000's we tried to get our hands on more technology, whatever is more advanced, we wanted it. we wanted that shit indiscriminately. the new thing. we were curious really
in the 2020's we are going back to fucking typewriters and flip phones and record players. we've had enough.