The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles...

I drove to Santa Fe the night before Taos Solar Music Festival to see the Nederland rock stars Elephant Revival do their thing and was delighted to see that the Santa Fe Brewery had porters and sweet potato fries.



After finishing my complimentary beverage, I felt inspired to bring out the ol’ Moleskine. I wrote this little scribble about something that had happened on the drive from Taos to Santa Fe. My rocket box had somehow popped open, yet managed to keep all my belongings safely in place.

Rocket Box Release

So what if
all flows out & gone

Material things are always
as there as air is

Why be attached
when there’s
so much more
to air

Music, moments
Laughs and learning
Breathing,
Yearning for all
to come
(and none of it is tangible)

As I was scribbling my thoughts, a photographer nearby poked me awake with a comment: “Glad to see people still use those things” pertaining to my pen and paper.

And I agree. In fact, right now, I am writing on my laptop in my makeshift bed. Typing has become much faster and more efficient for me. But when did efficiency and speed become so important? Technology has shifted our values in very poignant ways.

Before typographically musing, I was reading an article in The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I was drawn to this article because I wrote my Political Science thesis on the social effects of New Media and our capacity to interact (or lack thereof). My favorite article that I read for this research was Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Now, three years later, I wish Nicholas Carr had produced this Atlantic article for related investigations into the topic. His gist is that shifting technologies are not necessarily making us stupid, but rewiring the way we think.

My favorite reference in the article is about Nietzsche. When Nietzsche was going blind, he purchased a typewriter; as soon as he got the typing down, he no longer had to have his eyes open to transcribe his ideas. One of his friends told him that his already terse prose was becoming even more telegraphic. German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler said his prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.” Perhaps this is why Nietzsche has always been so quotable for me as a voracious philosophy lover of the 20th century - he is succinct. I have to admit that I am quite a scatterbrain and have an appetite for knowledge, but a very short attention span for consuming it. Big eyes with a small knowledge stomach, I suppose.

I don’t think technology is ruining anything. We need not avoid it in order to save our attention spans. But I do think we shouldn’t let new media steal our old ways of communicating, learning and consuming information. We must attempt to maintain some old ways in order to continue to value quality and earning the gift of information.

Don’t let the vandals steal all our handles.