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My friends, The combination of literally everyone wearing headphones at the gym I just returned to and the above podcast episode got me thinking, and tonight I want to use this letter to pose a question to you. Before we get to that question, though, a preface: Over the last year, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, we more or less conducted a worldwide experiment in replacing the firsthand experience of reality with life lived secondhand through screens and technology. We replaced face time with FaceTime. We replaced concerts with live streams. We replaced asking each other out with swiping right in dating apps. We replaced dine-in with take-out. We replaced CONNECTION with “connection” — truly together with awfully alone. The coronavirus gave us a gift: a chance to look into the crystal ball. We got to not just see, but experience this technological future we’re moving towards. Now that you have had a good taste for this technological future, here is the question I want to ask you: Have you enjoyed living through technology this past year? Was FaceTime the same as face time? Were live streamed concerts the same without the crowd and through a screen? Was life online as good as offline used to be? My answer to these questions is a strong, resounding “No.” I bet yours is too. I have yet to meet a single person who was happier living in the isolated tech-cocoons we have inhabited the past year. Rather, just about everyone I know was some degree of down, depressed, or losing their mind. From my perspective, it’s crystal clear that this secondhand experience of life is — at best and unsurprisingly — second-rate. As we get back out into the world (or when (depending on where in the world these words find you)), I urge you to make a conscious effort to prune back the tech and jump back into the more visceral, satisfying, riveting, scary, totally bodacious world of firsthand experience. Be where you are! Stop wearing headphones everywhere. Remove the apps from your phone you unconsciously open when you’re bored and let that boredom help motivate you to set forth, up, and out of this time of universal apathy. Delete those dating apps and start exercising the real-life-required muscle of courage again by striking up conversations with interesting strangers. Technology is damn useful, but we are very much still in the infancy of its adoption and figuring out how to use this stuff. In our ignorance, well, we’ve gone way too far. We have walled ourselves off from each other. Many apps these days are intentionally designed to be addictive. Social media is putting our awareness into echo chambers. Endlessly scrolling feeds are rotting away our attention spans. We are only beginning to uncover how terrible tech has been for us. Over time, I believe that we will culturally follow Cal Newport’s advice quoted atop this letter and better figure out how to make tech work for us (rather than us work for tech). Until then, though, the wise move is surely to dial back the pseudo-life of addicting apps that chain us to the secondhand experience of life through screens and to free our attention for the firsthand real deal. Sidenote: if the pandemic continues to die down, I would love to get face-to-face with y’all for a WONDER WANDER 2021 this fall! Just putting the feelers out into the universe: I have a few ideas, but might you know of a good gathering spot? Lastly, thank you for reading and sharing this wild ride of life with me. I appreciate it more than you know. With love & stoke, Ethan P.S. If you’re looking for a more worthwhile, analog replacement for your social media feeds, I, a thousand times over, recommend the books in the article below.
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