“this strobe-lit techno-rave communication environment”

Check this out, from the WSJ: A Manifesto for Slow Communication. As the title suggests, it is a manifesto for slower communication, to be achieved by consciously limiting the amount we communicate via high-tech media like email, chat, Facebook, text message, etc., etc., etc. I found this article (thanks, Sig) incredibly compelling, especially in light of my current circumstances. For one thing, I am connected to the people I love most and know best almost solely by the Internet for the next four months; I want to keep in touch and share my experiences here, but I also want to be living in the present moment and place. For another, I am living in a veritable temple to speed and communication technology. I bought a local cell phone two days ago, and it took some hunting to get a phone that was just that, a phone and nothing more. One shop clerk, when I asked for a phone without a camera, laughed heartily and said they had nothing of the kind in the store. I ultimately succeeded in buying a phone that exclusively makes calls and sends text messages (for $22 USD, plus pay-as-I go minutes), but only after fending off a desperate upsell by yet another shop clerk who basically begged me to at least get the next best phone, the one with the FM radio.

Hong Kong provides an object lesson in sensory overload and selective hearing, seeing, and even sensing in general. The streetscape outside my door is thronged with people, crowded with cars, and hung several stories high with flashing neon signs. Two days ago I went with a classmate to see an apartment broker; we had directions from another classmate, a map, and were only five blocks away, but we walked in circles for twenty minutes. I searched and searched the multitudinous signs – very difficult to do, because there are so many of them, and are in English maybe forty percent of the time – for the logo of the place we wanted. In the end, the office was located in an apartment building, on the ninth floor (we even took the wrong elevator; one went to the odd-numbered floors, and one – our pick – went to the even-numbered floors), and there was no signage inside or out. Strange.

Anyhow, I particularly liked the passage below and would be curious to hear your reactions to the manifesto.

“Everything we say needn't travel at the fastest rate possible. The difference between typing an email and writing a letter or memo out by hand is akin to walking on concrete versus stroll¬ing on grass. You forget how natural it feels until you do it again. Our time on this earth is limited, the world is vast, and the people we care about or need for our business life to operate will not always live and work nearby; we will always have to com¬municate over distance. We might as well enjoy it and preserve the space and time to do it in a way that matches the rhythms of our bodies. Continuing to work and type and write at speed, however, will make our communication environment resemble our cities. There will be concrete as far as the eye can see.”

To that end, once I finish this post I plan to head over to nearby Victoria Park, write a couple of postcards,* and enjoy the afternoon.

*I mentioned in a prior post that I coerced some airline staff in San Francisco to mail some things for me. I realized several hours later, and note here for your amusement, that I only managed to address two of the four pieces of mail. It was all stamped, though. Some of you are going to miss out on postcards from Philly. Whoops.