Weil’s disease – or ‘the internet is eating my brain’

When I was in Australia, I ended up with a smartphone (the handset was as cheap as the cheapest non-smart model, so I thought ‘why not?’).  There were two consequences

a) I met up with someone who I’d have otherwise missed because I was able to check email on the move

b) I freaked the wife out by emailing her from a coach between Melbourne and Adelaide (I only got a mobile a few years back, and she knows I am a luddite).

Actually, there was a third consequence, which I spotted early on and was the reason I haven’t used the smart phone since getting back to Blight(ed)y – that if I had a few ‘idle’ minutes I’d surf the web/trivia instead of read a few pages of a book.  And that is a baaaad habit to get into, and one that I knew I would if I didn’t remove the handset from my grubby paw.

All this sprang (well, slouched) to mind when I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s screed/jeremiad/argument about the (negative) impact of technologies.  This bit is pretty good…

Simone Weil wrote that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”. By this definition, our relationships to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves, are becoming increasingly miserly.

Simone Weil? Frog philosopher, whom I first heard about from #thefirstonethatgotaway

I’ve just read that wikipedia page.  Holy fucking shit, is all I have to say.

See also: My poem!  ‘Does your device suffice‘