Mar 6, 2024

Modern Era and Connections

the problem with technological advancements

I've been thinking about this, as I brush off the dust from my parents' old point-and-shoot film camera. "How cool", the tactile feeling, the tangibility. That feeling lost in the modern era as we start inclining towards smartphones capable of doing everything.

It's both a boon and a curse. Sure, people can now connect online, but it has created a distance among our close ones. I mean, it's not supposed do that. It's supposed to supplement our human relationships and serve as a tool for strengthening connections, not break them. Technology creates ease-of-access, but with an opportunity cost of emotions, commitment and deeper bonds.

The modern society is a consumerist society. In this age of high information and content and "productivity" one tends to slip into some eternal wormhole of "more, more and more". But it is not the absence of ties, but the ties themselves. that set us free (Han). We must look forward to ritualizing our lives and think for a moment: "Is it worth it?". We need to take a step forward towards being digitally minimal. A pause, a reversal.

A core concept of digital minimalism is to introduce friction and sort of "dumb" down off technology. That's why I started developing an interest to using an actual camera to take photos.

It's the camera we bought in 2014 (not the one I mention in the first sentence; that was an old Kodak Kroma 35). And no, it doesn't take pictures as good as my phone, but the process of clicking pictures through it gives me pleasure. It's a romanticist feeling I cannot describe.

One more example could be writing with a fountain pen. As far as my observation goes, it has become obsolete nowadays. Ball-point pens are disposable, cheaper (but not in the long term), easy-to-use. Thus, the mass opts for such pens.

But using a fountain-pen has this unique process, the inking, accidentally getting ink smeared in your hands, the writing, the feedback from the nib. All these contribute to a personification of an inanimate object. For me, writing with a fountain pen is a pleasure that any pen cannot replace.

Maybe it's a temporary feeling (as my parents often say), I am not really sure! I feel as though I am trying to get involved with life and nature in a deeper way. But nevertheless, I am sure that I have to pause, live slowly with vigour. That's a rare thing to behold in this modern life.