I Am Trapped Inside A Computer

I have become trapped inside my computer. It’s true – it is less a metaphor than you might think. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, in a land before there was a computer on every desktop, I had a typewriter. I loved my typewriter. It was work to type – and retype – my poems, short stories and articles, but I loved it.

The computer presented a way to make it easier for me to edit and manage my text. And, there was something magical about being able to store my writing on disks. I would bring my disks to a service bureau, and I would print my material. Then, I would use a light-table to create literary magazines and chapbooks. I was in heaven. I loved to write.

Somewhere along the way, I have become seduced by the technology. I became a developer, not a writer, and I began to read computer books on my vacations instead of the literature I used to read. Occasionally, I would get excited about the democratization of knowledge and culture, but the truth is that I abandoned my calling.

In a sense, I have become more interested in the printing press than I am in the written word. There was a time when, if I wanted to read Plato’s Republic, I had to go to the library, or to the bookstore. Today, The Republic is available online from a number of sources. Still, I have not read it in years, and I no longer know people who have read it.

My experience is not that the computer has created a network of scholars and artists. Perhaps it has, but I have long since become seduced by the means of sharing and managing knowledge rather than knowledge and culture itself. In Walden, Thoreau once wrote, “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”

That is my fear sometimes: I have been distracted. It took heart disease to get me to expose myself to Robinson Caruso. I listened to it on my MP3 player while walking to regain my strength and health. What struck me was that society made Robinson Caruso long to be free and wild, but being deserted in the wild had a civilizing effect on him. Even as I love technology, and code, I miss my former interests.

Let me out! (I am sure I will feel differently tomorrow.)

Civilization is a limitless multiplication
of unnecessary necessaries.
Mark Twain