I was recently reading a study that amongst other things reports on trends in tech over the next five years and its potential for academic use. I’ve mentioned before my sense of floundering in our brave new word as a non digital-native and yet I seem to spend increasing portions of my work acting immersing myself ever deeper into the online world and translating it for others.
Being in touch, always being able to be contactable, drives ever more tools and change in our behaviours. The landline is much quieter these days, only parents and salesmen call.
On the coffee table next to me is a postcard of Bryher, the island we stayed on last June. To get a mobile signal you have to walk around the beach, up a bank and find a spot where you could see the mast on the island of St Mary’s five miles across the sea. At one point we were up the top of Gweal hill (the middle stroke of the 3 shape) trying to get a signal, being buffeted by a wind so strong that my face stung.
The postcard shows a small green land mass outlined in white sandy beaches, surrounded by navy blue seas. It’s a dot of a rock about one-and-a-half miles long and less than three quarters of a mile wide. Along with its other island companions, it is isolated 30 miles off Cornwall, vulnerable to the full force of the Atlantic ocean.
I’m desperate to go back. To get away from Google and Twitter and Facebook and emails. The only evidence of wireless we saw was on the island of St Agnes in the Turks Head. About three people with their laptops were huddled around one table next to the piano. Even that seems quaint, “Just going down the pub for a pint and catch up on my emails, back later, bye”. Why does it seem quaint and not progress? I’m not sure that the Carpenters at the end of our road will have wireless. It does have a piano, but it’s the sort of pub that in the unlikely event of me walking in, and the even unlikelier even of someone playing, asking if they had wireless would surely stun the pianist into silence.
Perhaps it seems quaint and appealing in Scilly because staying in touch, while easier than it has ever been, is still much harder than it is for us on the mainland. You have to work at it a bit. The actual human contact becomes precious again. Today, with several windows open on my desk top; Facebook, Twitter, email, and my mobile nearby it’s wallpaper. Welcome and unwelcome distractions from what I’m supposed to be doing. I couldn’t even manage to keep up with a friend who might in the same half hour send me an email, text me and reply to a comment I’ve left elsewhere. Responding is optional. I feel like it is making my interpersonal contact shallow and less cherished. Instead of reveling in the virtual natter over the garden fence, I’m dissatisfied. And I’ve never had it so good.
