Day: November 26, 2012

I think the Ipad is one of the most remarkable pieces of technology I have seen in my lifetime, a creative legacy for the genius who imagined it and created it – Steve Jobs. My use of the Ipad has increased continuously since I bought it two years ago – I have drawn on it, checked my e-mail, taken it on book tours, taken photos and videos, browsed sites, checked news and weather, explored the Internet, shopped for books and many other things. I have recommended it enthusiastically to many people.

In the past few weeks and months, though, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with this miraculous device and the ways in which it is affecting and changing me. I find myself checking it every day. I am bombarded with corporate messages urging me to buy things, challenging me to download things, alerting me to news and weather that makes me uncomfortable, and that I don’t really want or need to see. I am turning it on too much, it sometimes seems an extension of my hand. It also has been making me edgy, I think, allowing me to tap into things that fuel fear and anger and restlessness. I don’t need to be offered a 100 videos a day of people dying, setting themselves on fire, being bombed and beaten, murdered and burned.

I used the Ipad to donate money to victims of Hurricane Sandy and I rationalized turning it on all day because someone as important and interactive as me needed to be checking his Ipad. It made me feel important, in touch. My editors and publicists need to reach me after, so I had to carry the Ipad around with me. It was only in the past few weeks that I realized that my editors and publicists rarely need to reach me, and I am not so important that I need to be checking my e-mail all day. It is one of the great and unwavering laws of technology – the more you have, the more you use, the more e-mails you read, the more you answer. I am drowning in the machinations of Corporate America – Plaid Friday, Cash Mobs, Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Ipad has become a transmitter of a vast universe that wants to sign me up, take my money, and give me much more information than I want or need or is good for me.

I don’t want to live that kind of life. I don’t need to be in touch all the time. I have little money these days to buy more things at discounts that I don’t really need either. I’ve gotten a dozen messages flaunting expensive new cameras at great prices when I have a perfectly good camera and am taking photos I like. The Ipad is tapping into the anxiety that runs below my surface. I don’t need to see a video of every person bombed or killed on the earth either. So I am moving to a new relationship with my Ipad as of today. I will use it when I am traveling. Playing some  games. Buying a book for my Kindle Paperwhite. Ordering things we need that are not available locally. I will check e-mail on my computer once or twice a day – I have cable, it is easy enough to do. I will acknowledge that I don’t need to be that much in touch, don’t need that much information, don’t need that many offers of things to buy.

I love my Ipad but we are now going to spend a lot less time together. Technology demands this – we have to think about it, every day as our space and privacy and peace of mind are invaded, and brutalized by the boundless greed of the Corporate Nation. It is not the Ipad’s fault, it is mine, and I will respond to it.

Thinking is my bread and butter and the Ipad, along with many other things are making it hard to do.

My office is taking shape also. Maria picked out some white wrinkle curtains for me which I like and I put my Homer Simpson doll – I’ve had it for years – up on the window sill. The curtains block out the sun but let in a lot of light. They are from India. I love my new office and I can’t wait to work there.

I am seeing the world differently every day – especially fear – and I am actually a bit at a loss how to write about it. I will figure it out later. This morning, I was struck by the feeling of my life with an artist, how it changes the environment around me. People say I am an artist, but I think I am a writer, which is different than an artist, at least to me. Artists and writers are not better than anyone else, are not magical or gifted beyond the average human, they just see the world differently than most people, and this is reflected in my living room windows, which change color and shape daily. This morning, I came downstairs to see one of Florence’s blue shoes on the sill, having appeared magically in the night. I love the elf who does this.

I’m talking to my editor at 10:30, then going to Battenkill Books to take some calls from people participating in the Virtual Cash Mob there today. I am getting wary of Gray Thursdays, Plaid and Black Fridays, Virtual Cash Mobs and Cyber Mondays. I feel that the Corporate Monster is devouring me and our lives day by day, and the measure of a good shopper, as opposed to a normal one is is good ones buy fewer things at smaller places. My inbox is flooded with promotions and discounts and I would like to celebrate the week by buying nothing. I’d love to see that Meaningful Consumption Index measured on TV and in the news – how long can people go without buying things they need during the holidays.

But I’ll do that after selling some books at Battenkill. 519 677-2515 or www.battenkillbooks.com Hope to talk to you from there.