Digital Homes

March 24, 2021

I set a Screen Time limit on Instagram this year, frustrated by the amount of advertising my mindless scrolling was causing me to consume. (The irony of using one behemoth’s product to limit my use of another behemoth’s product isn’t lost on me…) But this week or thereabouts it seems like the powers that be have decided to make some changes – packing more advertising into your feed, slicker Discover recommendations.

It’s just all so loud. Our digital spaces are so loud. Posts scream at me with things it thinks I’ll like to buy, cats, whatever social issue’s trending, and the news. Videos! Flashing text! A veritable firehose of content.

A line from Chimero’s been on my mind – “if technology is a place where we live, a place that we carry around with us, shouldn’t we choose to be in lively and nourishing digital environments?” Accompanied by a line from Current Affairs, on how “the creation of beautiful things was seen as part and parcel of building a fairer, kinder world” – a philosophy from the Arts & Crafts movement of the 19th century.

I love the reading room in my university, with its floor-to-ceiling glass paneling that lets you look out at the nearby garden and the flood of sunlight during the day. It buzzes at all hours with footsteps, the sounds of students discussing coursework, labs test-walking their robots down the hallways and the occasional mad clack of keyboards during bursts of inspiration. What is the digital equivalent of this quiet activity? (Or is that the wrong question to ask?)

I taught Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for a while, and digital ads increasingly remind me of this vignette of Montag trying to memorize a line from the Bible: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

A plea for quieter spaces, where we can hear ourselves think.