December swim
I heard the other day that "we were moving at the speed of science." What does it even mean? Should it make me excited or scared? I can't help but sense a rather large contradiction. What happens to all the critical bits of information when science leaps forward at "a high speed"? I can't help but see the image from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - a blurred vision heavily focused on one spot in the center of the screen. Nothing matters when you attempt to jump the time barrier. I found a reference to the same feeling in John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's book, The Social Life of Information. Published in 2000, it takes the reader into the ancient realm when phrases like "hypertext," "world-wide-web," or "datafication" were commonly used and much applauded by technology believers. I remember those days - we all eagerly quoted "Moore's Law" while excited about the new Mac with 128 Mb of RAM.
There are, however, side effects of travelling fast, cleverly spotted by the authors. While the "driver" may enjoy the thrill of being at the helm, the rest of fellow passengers desperately cling to their lives, looking at the passing landscape as the technology train zooms through communities, shared knowledge, history or social resources. Unfortunately, nothing outside the windows makes sense anymore or matters due to the high speed, which discards anything that potentially holds the train back. A less exciting description of the above is the term "tunnel vision," which carries rather negative connotations.
“The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead, but to look around.”
If someone questions the speed and omissions of valuable information, the driving team shouts back to embrace more power, and the journey continues leaving everything behind. In the old TopGear shows, Jeremy Clarkson always insisted that more power is the solution, and we know how it ended. In 1938, The New York Times predicted the disappearance of a pencil, which should be considered gone in no time in the face of more sophisticated tools. It was 1938. How many beautiful devices giving the human brain ways to express creativity were doomed by the futurists driving us into the digital abyss? I don't even want to know.
But life simply goes on regardless of how much more power is applied. Hence the set of Staedtler Pencils lying on my desk. As far as I know, they hold a prominent space in every student's backpack - from grade 1 to university—same tools, different hands, and unmatched creative outcomes. Conrad Gessner, a Swiss naturalist, offered in 1565 the first description of a device containing a graphite core inside a wooden body. Since then, many have improved on the pencil, including Henry David Thoreau, who created pencils that didn't smudge as much, and a numbering system that notes the firmness of the graphite. Yet, despite The New York Times' predictions, we still use them four hundred years later. Ideas come and go. The same happens to ideologies. Being a person who spent thirty years behind the iron curtain, I can attest to it. Life will seek to find balance as it always does.
The beach was covered in the remains of the snow that fell on Friday. I was planning to dive into the ocean yesterday but ran out of time preparing the Polish version of the eBook for its release. It is up now, and it makes me very happy. For some reason, I thought that translation would take a long time, but I managed to get it done in three weeks. What started over two years ago ended in a speedy run toward the finish line in a rather unexpected realization of ideas, desires and intentions.
The water temperature was 7ºC while the air oscillated between 1 and 2ºC. Everything slowed down when I went further before the depth was good enough for swimming. I am always amazed by this peaceful feeling, calm and connected. While my feet and hands quickly get cold, the rest of my body somehow cocoons in the remaining heat. The monkey mind is gone, and breathing is the only thing occupying my thoughts—slow and deep. Instead of "the speed of science," I experienced "the speed of nature," which is precisely where I wanted to be.
Find out why I got sick and how "incurable" became "curable."
