Staying Connected
An abundance of feelings
I don’t have many writing rituals except that writing into a text editor while in a moving train is intrinsically easier. With coffee cup on the table (because, yes, you always try to find an empty table seat) and your brain having suddenly discovered its closeness to the all too distant muse, the windows of the train reflect the blinking cursor fill in more and more of the empty document as you near your destination.
This was penned in a train from Nottingham to London.
—
When the Wi-Fi refuses to connect and the mobile network signals are far too weak for any use, I stare at a non-functioning Figma and Notion. The downside of apps supercharged through being connected to the internet is, well, relying on the internet with no offline mode to accomplish even the most fundamental. Now, I know I am definitely young enough to have grown up with the internet in a major way, however, this reminded me of the times when:
Smartphones (and smartphones connected to the internet) were a rarity, so, real life would pierce through small segments of browsing the internet on the PC.
Logging into Club Penguin to hang out with friends had to be meticulously planned around when anybody at home may need to make a telephone call (thereby disconnecting the internet).
Saying goodbye to friends at school on the last day before summer holidays really was goodbye for months. Due to the nature of expat life in Saudi Arabia, friends would sometimes have to move out of the country with their families transforming the same goodbye to have a much longer meaning.
Running the longest cable across the literal street from my cousin’s home to ours while on vacation in Pakistan to be able to borrow their internet. The same cable was not invincible against load shedding nor other environmental hazards, of course.
Having to write an essay on “The Greatest Invention” or a similar theme for English homework used to be a predictable topic. I recall people choosing television, airplanes, steam engine, modern medicine, and—yes— the Internet as their pick. I wish I had saved my past (crappy) essays to know what I had chosen for certain. I can imagine that working in tech for a remote company would surely have swayed my past selves choice. I don’t refute it being one (if not, The) greatest invention. Yet, my nostalgia paints a picture where “connecting” had more weight attached it or where we didn’t center its existence to our existence. The jury is still out on how much trust I place in my nostalgia as anything other than fleeting companion to this traveler.
What’s inevitable, regardless, is the continuation of the rapid growth of the “connected” world. We witnessed this phenomenon in extreme during the pandemic years where tech companies rapidly (over?)hired staff to keep up with demand. Even in our loneliest, we could reach for one another.
The transition from that period to the present age of “artificial intelligence” has my un-artificial un-intelligence swirling in an abundance of feelings. My late father was exceptional at shorthand. He could summarize meetings effortlessly through having built this muscle over the years. Whatever he achieved in the professional world was the result of his tireless labor having moved to Saudi Arabia at a young age. Pretty soon, though, I imagine, he would have realized that shorthand was to become a forgotten skill due to the advent of technology. The talk of increased productivity or business value is secondary to me; I pour my thoughts wondering how dearly he missed something he had dedicated his time excelling in?
What is new is exciting, no doubt, but should the passing of the familiar be left only to the shortening memory of the melodramatic ones? Even as/if I ‘embrace’ AI, I reach through the courage instilled in me by my father to be myself.
All innovation is personal.
- Rizwana