Can We Have A Future That Benefits from the Lessons of Our Past?
"The past is always infinitely stranger and more interesting than we imagine; paradoxically, most of it is consigned with stunning rapidity to oblivion." -Kathryn Schulz
When I consider what we’ve lost to Big Tech and the broligarchy over the last 30 years, my shortlist begins and ends with our privacy and attention. Gone and gone.
Thankfully, there are other missing pieces from the analog world that we can reclaim. We can read printed books and magazines and newspapers, for one. We can listen to albums on a turntable, talk on the phone again, play board games instead of video games, and send and receive mail.
Remember mail?
Remember how you used to eagerly await an important letter and how a letter from a friend could light up your day? I recently relived this deliciously analog experience. For my 60th birthday, my wife Darby arranged for several friends to reach me with a card or letter, old school, through the U.S. mail.
When I started reading the cards and letters and feeling the emotions on the page, I was moved to tears. There’s something about the composition of a letter, the handwriting, and the deliberate rhythm of the words that reconnect you with powerful, nourishing memories and the people you shared them with.
There’s another side to letter writing that I’d like you to consider. No one except the intended recipient can read what you wrote unless someone intercepts your letter and opens it. This is not the case with any form of digital communication. The digital overlords can read this newsletter, our email, our social media posts, our AI prompts, our texts, and anything else we type into a connected device.
With this in mind, handwriting suddenly becomes a critical survival skill, and cursive is a weird but accessible form of code.
It’s fair to say that composing and sending personal mail counts as a weird thing to do, and I highly encourage you to do weird things. I recently wrote an article that other nonconformists might enjoy. It’s called “Weirdness Is A Virtue (That We Must Cultivate and Celebrate)”. The article is an overview of Douglass Rushkoff’s talk at South By Southwest in March and how he sees our collective weirdness as a form of resistance against dehumanizing systems (a theme we keep returning to).
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Writing poems is another oddball activity. There’s no money in it and little appreciation. What sort of weirdo writes or reads poems today? I do!
One of my birthday greetings arrived as a handmade booklet, or ‘zine, consisting of original photos by my friend
, plus a selection of poems from Ursula LeGuin, Jim Harrison, Gary Snyder, Kay Ryan, Wendell Berry, and W. G. Sebald.I am impressed by the works included and by Charlie’s effort to gather, bind, and send them my way.
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It’s the letter that counts.
Research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2021 found that people significantly underestimate the positive impact a letter of gratitude has on its recipient.
The researchers also found that the letter writers were unduly concerned about their ability to express their gratitude skillfully. While the writers worried about choosing the right words, the recipients were happy with the warmth of the gesture.
[Source: UChicago News]
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I read a great essay today by Jia Tolentino about our relationship to technology in The New Yorker (gated). Here’s a short passage to give you a feel:
…my phone, a device that makes me feel like I am strapped flat to the board of an unreal present: the past has vanished, the future is inconceivable, and my eyes are clamped open to view the endlessly resupplied now. More than a decade of complaining about this situation has done nothing to change my compulsion to induce dissociation anew each day.
We are continually seeking freedom from the devices that jam our signals, the news that sinks our spirits, and the forever flood of more content, more to do, and more to escape from.
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Click the Note below to learn a little more about bearing witness, documenting our findings, and safely archiving data in analog forms that can’t be easily deleted.
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Today is Darby’s birthday! Do you mind if I celebrate her for a minute? Thank you.
When I met Darby in Chicago in November 2001, she was into film and theater, bigly. She worked for the Chicago Film Fest, for a documentary filmmaker, and for an editing house. She hung out with local actors and directors.
This professional and personal interest rose up again in Austin when Darby joined Mondo, a subsidiary of Alamo Drafthouse. Since leaving Mondo, Darby’s been busy running production on an indie documentary that highlights and celebrates the musical culture of St. Croix.
To learn more about this developing project and how you can add your support, please visit this GoFundMe page.
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Thanks for being here now,
Do you want my help to grow a mission-based organization, spark a social change movement, or find support for an arts and culture project? I bring a wealth of strategic planning, brand communications, and mentoring to the table.
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