The day is coming when I give up computers.
I do not say that lightly. I say it, and people around me think I am joking.
I'm not joking.
I have been dealing, for twenty years or so, with computers. They have become a major part of my work. I would say in the last fifteen years they have been a major part of my life.
But I am sick of them.
You get the reputation of knowing something about computers, and you are inevitably a "resource" for other people. I do not mind helping people, really, but it seems I get stuck with the worst sort of dilemmas. I get asked to fix problems that I really cannot fix, or to intervene in computer situations I have no business intervening in.
They have long since ceased to be a pleasure.
I wish to devote more time to books, to the simple act of reading. I have been reading a lot of theology lately, and it has brought me peace of mind. Not just because of the subject matter, and because of the rediscovery of my faith, which is a wonderment to all, and for some people, something of a horror.
But part of it is the simple tactile pleasure of reading a book. Its demands are simple. It can be taken anywhere. It does not require a power souce, or an internet connection. It does not require rebooting, is not subject to spam, viruses, or worms, and usually people do not ask me to fix them for them.
I have acquired a good number of liturgical books and there is something reassuring about a book that a computer simply does not have. I cannot relate the simple joy of something like the Mundelein Psalter.
One day last year we lost power for a few hours when I was working at home. I actually spent about an hour reading the Gospel of Matthew by candlelight -- an act that could have been done at any point in the last twenty centuries by a human being, but which seemed to me to be utter novelty.
I worry about the problem of "the grid", which, for those of you who are not societal pessimists, is the large scale problem we have if there is an interruption in power supply. So much of society is based on the premise of easy access to electricity, and so much of our lives are chained to the computers that govern commerce, store our data, give us directions, and demand our constant attention, that we have a hard time remembering what life was like before the computer. If the grid or the network collapsed for any appreciable period of time, we'd soon learn that times have changed, indeed.
I'm old enough to remember the time before computers in the home. I'm old enough to remember the time when the only screen in the house was the computer's idiot cousin, the television, and it had only three stations.
I did a lot of reading back then. I also spent a lot of time outdoors.
Honestly, I'm thinking about doing something like growing plants, instead. Something where the story line plays out over days, and not seconds.
I'm also sick of television and radio, too. I'm sick of the constant interruption of the screens and the speakers, the clamor of noise, the ceaseless beckoning of the damned devices for attention.
Part of it is that our culture seems particularly impoverished, of late. So shabby that it can no longer hide its shabbiness. So loud, braying, and moronic that I simply wish to shut it off.
We were not meant to live in service to machines, particularly machines that are so unreliable, and only exist to annoy.
Some day soon, I will walk away from them all.
I will not miss them.