I did not miss social media or my cell phone or my video game for one second last week while I was out on the river helping to train another class of river guides.
I never once thought to take out my cell phone and search for connectivity.
It felt so goddamned good.
It felt powerful.
I felt connected to the land and the water and the weather and the cold and the hot and the crawling bugs and the ticks who were merely seeking a soft spot to land and feed and call home until they blow up on purloined blood like a sated balloon animal with stick figure legs.
The tech giants want to envelope the world in an inescapable mesh network powered by thousands of satellites vying to dominate the night sky. A world where you will not be able to escape the idiotic ranting and raving of a former would-be dictator without simply leaving your device behind. A world where your stock broker might find you in the midst of freeing a boat off a midstream rock, or your business partner might find you partway down a rappel into a fairyland of mosses and ferns, or a robocaller from Dar es Salaam calling to tell you that your social security number has been compromised and your credit card number will be needed to fix this regrettable snafu might find you staring into the dying light of a dimming, but still warm, campfire.
What? You say you would never be so foolish as to leave the damn device on?
You could always check your messages during some point of your day. Who, given the opportunity, could dare not to look? It’s there at your fingertips. It’s easy. It’s simple. The vast web of all things. Only a few clicks away. Maybe you’ve been sent a special deal on water filters or hipster socks or the latest greatest ap.
There’s a reason the proverbial cat died from curiosity.
How will nature compete?
I can’t wait to listen to a client arguing with his parents’ hospice over care and billings when I’m forty miles down the river. I can’t wait to hear someone’s anguish when they learn their family pet has died when I am a mile beneath the earth’s surface in the Grand Canyon. I can’t wait to be serenaded by the idle chatter of a teen talking about literally nothing with another teen hundreds or thousands of miles away. I can’t wait for parents calling to check up on little Donnie or Dottie every hour of the day.
I’m a curmudgeon, not a Luddite, but I am also a staunch proponent of designating millions of square miles to be off limits to 3G, 4G, 5G or any G. Every river corridor of all the classic overnight western rivers, for instance. I don’t know how you do it, but it needs to be thought about and implemented before ubiquitous internet connectivity destroys the heart and soul of wilderness and quasi-wilderness everywhere.
I’m usually an “all things in moderation, even moderation” sort of guy but, when it comes to the threat of the internet encroaching upon my sacred spaces, it brings out the surly in me. Because I know if I CAN have connectivity—surrounded by the oldest exposed rock in the world while looking up from the depths at ‘two hand-widths’ of blue sky and towers of red rock—I’d probably seek it. I’d make some excuse for why it would not be tampering with the delicate balance of my experience, but there’s no doubt it would.
With satellites being launched routinely and, I imagine, on a daily basis, I know it’s only a matter of time before Bill Gates’ original dream of bringing the world wide web to Mongolian yak herders and South Pole explorers will be realized.
I’m just hoping sanity prevails and sanctums like the Colorado River corridor through the Grand Canyon are miraculously preserved and protected. Not by edict but by dint of inhospitable terrain and lousy sight lines. But I fear the worst. We will learn to compromise as we travel through compromised landscapes that once were reliably free of the virtual online universe.
Instead I’ll just have to make my river journeys cell phone free and force the rebellious to sneak off for a ‘hit’ of internet connectivity as they now have to sneak off for a smoke.
~~~
Speaking of social media, the board of the private company Elizabeth Warren describes as a disinformation-for-profit machine decided this morning to reconvene six months from now to decide—again—whether the man who attempted to topple the American government and—advertently or inadvertently—have members of Congress killed, or judged by kangaroo courts comprised of rednecks, racists and Q-Anon raconteurs, should have his platform reinstated. The good news is that they elected to continue the de-platforming for another half year. The bad news is that they seem to think something may be different 180 days from now in the charred wasteland of American politics.
If it were my business? No surprises. Banned for life. No chance for parole. It seems only fair if you’ve spent the last four years trying to destroy one of the world’s oldest democracies.
The automaton who owns the company has enough ‘fuck you’ money to tie him up in court until he’s earthworm food and it would still only be a rounding error in the social media platform’s books. So, there’s really no downside.
The funny thing is the conservative propaganda and infotainment channel known as Faux News posted a headline declaring The Former Guy WAS banned for life this morning. Which means they’re—once again—flat out lying and attempting to incite/enrage the 70% of white voters who voted for the loser, or don’t think the corpulent real estate hustler has six more months left in him.
I’m going to go with lying. Pray for the other.
I can’t remember if I recommended this podcast already, but my brother Bill introduced it to me on our latest cross-country road trip. It’s called Sway and the host is Kara Swisher. I haven’t dug into very many of them, but the few he and I listened to while driving were all super-engaging. I’ll bet if you look over the subject matter, and the people she interviews, you’ll find something that piques your interest.
This Sway podcast is relevant to today’s news. CIA’s Top Technologist is Uncomfortable with Facebook.
Also, as you have probably learned, or gathered, I am a Seattle Storm fan. This is - most likely - Sue Bird’s final WNBA season but, who knows, maybe she’ll be the Satchel Paige (he pitched 3 shut out innings in the Majors at the age of 59) of women’s basketball? She has 17 years under her belt.
If you want to jump on the bandwagon late, this season—perhaps for the first time—all 32 games will be aired nationally or locally. A quarter of them will be aired on ESPN or one of the lesser ESPNs. Just a head’s up.
Sally’s tick count has reached 80+. Ewwwwww. - JLM