I finally got around to reading Mandy Brown’s excellent Coming Home. There’s a lot in here that I’m chewing on, including the feeling that she describes in the lede…
I’ve written before about the restlessness inherent to screens, the inability to ever linger or pause or catch your breath. It’s a strangely disembodied experience, a sense of ceaseless, rustling motion when nothing is moving at all: electrical pulses flash and gasp beneath the oceans, your mind strains to catch up, your body remains still save for a few twitching digits, the shell that’s left behind when your spirit evacuates for the mirage of higher ground. We become as smooth and reflective as the screen itself, all glassy surfaces and metallic edges obscuring the hollowness within. No need to fantasize about what it might be like to upload your consciousness to the machine – most of us are already there.