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My my, it's July.
The internet of all things, even running.
It's 3:30 in the afternoon. I've just woken up and I'm thinking about 'the internet of things'. Soon I'll go for a walk to try to get my head around what just happened, but for now I'm inexplicably drawn to the inter-connectedness of, well, seemingly everything these days, and why that meant I didn't 'greet the dawn' until the day was almost over. It's the depth of winter, and in this old, cold house in which I live the sun has already dropped so low in the sky that the evening cool air is beginning to seep in, mingling with the previous night's frigidness which has almost, but not quite completely managed to hang around within the house, darkened all day against what sunlight there was by the closed curtains of my slumber.
I'm working the night shift again, but this particularly late start to the now nearly completed day was caused by having to work back an extra hour, meaning I didn't get home until nearly 8 a.m. That extra hour makes a big difference. The body struggles always with the demands of a constantly changing shift work pattern, but after a while it comes to know what's expected of a night shift, and so normally I can get home around 7 a.m. and fall asleep without trouble, awaking mostly in the early afternoon. Just an hour's difference however confuses the body clock more so than usual, and so I slept through until very late, and now my synapses are so befogged I don't quite know what I'm doing. Yet there it is ... the internet of things. I've been dreaming about it, or so I think, and now it dogs my mind.
After coffee, more coffee and a late afternoon breakfast, I walk to the post office to mail off my postal vote for this weekend's federal election, pondering all the while if I am in a fit state to cast a meaningful ballot. This is a double dissolution election, meaning we're voting in both houses of parliament, and the voting paper for the senate took up, quite literally, the full length of our kitchen table. With about 150 candidates from 30+ parties, not to mention the gaggle of independents, it required a lot of consideration, daunting enough when in an un-befogged and well-refreshed state, but right now it's causing my grey matter to liquify. And somehow I keep coming back to how it's related to what happened this morning, and why the simple premise of working back an hour later than usual has caused this state of confusion over my democratic voting right. As I walk to the post office, the envelope I carry takes on special significance and I'm pleased that I still have this right, but also annoyed that it's made so difficult by the particular circumstances of the day. Have I used my ballot wisely? I'll probably never know.
But back to the internet of things. The glib talk about the brave new world of interconnectedness usually talks about how your fridge will automatically order home delivery of food when stocks get low, or how your car will automatically book it's own service for you once the requisite miles or time have passed. This is not how I see things. Those are facile examples of a greater web of worth, and also of a more disturbing and subtle generational problem that is significantly changing the way we work in the world and with each other.
The reason I worked back late this morning was because my relief shift, who also happens to be my boss and who was a little unusually covering a shift for another person on a day off, forgot that he had rostered himself to do so. Whilst you might think this is a simple thing that could happen to anyone, it's actually a matter of pride and common courtesy among shift workers that you are never late for your start of shift, and trebly so when you are relieving the night shift. It just doesn't happen. But increasingly I see these sort of intransigencies occurring as a symptom of a deeper problem. You can see it on any train station platform, even walking down the street: people everywhere are immersed deep within their phones and 'devices', interacting with a totally connected world and drowning, seemingly happily so, in a vast tsunami of information. It's as if everyone has been hypnotised by a mesmeric world of facts, knowledge and worse still, opinion. The result is a lowering of standards as attention to detail falls victim to the overload of absorbing everything the world has to throw at you. It's not just middle managers forgetting their own diaries, it's a whole new generation of carelessness. I see lawyers and solicitors making simple mistakes, then spending so much time chasing small, forgotten details that everything takes three or four times longer than it should. Customer service has fallen victim to the endless frantic activity of service providers chasing their own tails just to do the basics.
This is why, as I walked the streets allowing the cool late afternoon air to clear my brain, I was thinking about my vote, and if I had made the right choices. It has never been a problem for me in the past, and I deplored the indecisiveness of 'swinging voters' who I thought were just apathetic and lazy. But now I really have to wonder if any politician has a grasp of what makes the world tick anymore and what they may be able to do about it. The economy seems to have been hijacked by obscenely salaried CEOs and automated trading systems that control the world's bourses. Resources are gobbled up at ever increasing rates of frenetic panic as companies seek to make a profit before the next wave of compulsive obsessiveness changes the world's consumption habits. And the ever-flowing total deluge of mind-crushing information overloading us every second of the day surely prevents anyone from making even the slightest bit of sense about anything. For every logical, sensible piece of rock solid information, there is an equally vehement opposing force from mongrel, nihilistic xenophobes and crazies who are given voice by the global phenomena of instant and global communication. It's a frightening situation that the likes of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell would be horrified by, despite their having glimpsed the possibility of it decades ago.
The walk though is doing me a power of good and I begin to turn my mind again to running. I should be running out here, not walking, the simplicity of it being an antidote to the world gone mad; a life-giving salve for my tortured body and soul. Never mind, I'm dressed for walking, and it's doing me a world of good. The air is crisp and my senses are now momentarily heightened. I can hear the rustle of every leaf in the tree being blown by the wind and it takes me back to my childhood, when I'd sometimes stand as mesmerised by the simple sound of wind in the trees as people it seems are by their phones today.
I make a point of not using my phone whilst standing on a train station platform, and never whilst walking the streets. This is not out of any sense of elitism, but a simple plaintive cry for freedom from the tangled web and insistence of everything that screams at me incessantly from my own phone. It bothers me that I, like many others, have come to rely on the phone, the tablet and the PC as constant companions, and as appreciative as I am for the ability to communicate so readily with the rest of the planet, I am coming to the realisation that I need more time off, more time 'unplugged'.
It's intriguing that even during races it's now not unusual at all to find runners talking on their phones. Mothers, especially, seem to take delight in speaking to their children, giving them continual feedback as to how they're going, and what chores she expects done before she returns home. Is this really necessary? Is this convenience, or communication for its own sake, gone just a touch mad?
I confess that it's beginning to dawn on me as I age that it seems almost compulsory to take a phone whilst on a run (I don't and never have), if purely for safety's sake, and I know the day will come when I will most likely be gently chided into doing so. I hope however that the day is yet a long way off. When the brain resetting function of a run becomes compromised by the need to take a little piece of the world's interconnectedness with me, then a piece of me will die. The solitude and joy of running is powerful and for me at least, those benefits are amplified by being unplugged from the noise, chaos and demands of the wider world.
I wonder if the recent Brexit vote was something similar, not so much a cry to be free of immigration and the overlords of Brussels, but a plea not to have to think about such things; a cry for simplicity if you like. Well, in fact I'm sure such things are never that straight-forward, but still I hope the world does crave the simple life sufficiently to put down the phone from time to time; to switch off the PC and the smart television and maybe just read a book (a real one, with paper); do some gardening or just go for a run. These are wonderful things to be cherished.
I'd like to say this was all written out on a notepad with pen and ink before being transferred to PC for the benefit of a wider audience, but of course it wasn't. Technology does have it good points.
Run on, friends.
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My my, it's July.
