[Editor’s note: Day 23 proceeding Day 1, and Day 9]
Its hard being an alien stuck inside this human body on earth. You see all kinds of nature here, trees, leaves, green grass. Beautiful glassy blue crystal clear mountain streams, with the water softly falling down, so cold and clear. Giant groves of majestic poplar trees, the leaves flicking against each other in the light summer breeze. Tall grassy fields that sweep on endlessly until they give way to a grove of bulrushes, and a dark deep blue pond. You hear some ducks quacking in the distance, a mother herding her ducklings in the sunshine, forming a row, ever mindful of her brood.
The forests are teeming with life, large stands of birch, tamarack, and spruce trees. Thousands of species of birds everywhere. Very early in the morning by a huge sweeping lakeside shoreline you hear them. Bluebirds, goldfinches, orioles, sparrows, robins, all of them singing together in a mind blowing symphony, early in the morning as the sun rises to greet the day.
The humans are mostly divorced from this. They climb into their vehicles early in the morning and whiz off to their day jobs. As you take your notes for this ‘observe and report’ mission you enter that
“..their actions although unique to their individual circumstance have a common element. They have to have that black rectangular device with them before they leave the house. They check it while sipping coffee. They check it after brushing their teeth. They glance at it quickly before leaving for the office. And lo and behold they check it when they get to the office.”
On these black devices there is messaging. Dozens of messages for most, for some hundreds every day. Some humans are flipping back and forth between 5 or 6 conversations at a time. The younger ones are texting so fast, and flipping between conversations that they often cross wire their messages by mistake. As well as mainstream messaging humans are winging WhatsApp, Messenger, and WeChat missives.
Then there are the mindsucking apps. These insidious things claw onto the human consciousness with a remarkably tenacious grip. And they don’t let go. FaceBook the app, Instagram the app, Twitter the app, SnapChat the app, Pinterest the app, linkedin the app..
Meanwhile any free time that might have evaded the mindsucking apps is quickly consumed by a bevy of time idling apps, Things like the youtube, netflix and reddit, with their notifications showing up here and there, gently reminding that there is something new to be looked at.
The human mindspace has become a kind of a battlefield, the big four deploying new apps designed to grab attention and hold on to it at all costs. The design put into them is about claiming the largest share of attention. Tapping into the human psyche, they exploit the intricate workings of the human brain.
You are reminded this observe and report mission has thirty days on planet Earth, you’ve seven more to go. But you see a trajectory here, you see a pattern. Human intimacy, face to face conversations, humans experiencing connecting with one another is vanishing, replaced by a thin veil of existence. Digital existence.
Seven days, seven days. It’s going to be a long seven days.
My identity is well known to the experimenter of this challenge which (thankfully) is running out of time and space. Your lush description of natures beauty and our precious environment belie the facts that you seek to destroy natures creatures seeking refuge from the snow and cold in your house.
I think she is referring to the mice.
there’s a typo on third entry – “preceding”?
Thanks DJ!
There’s an old saying (well actually a new saying since I just made it up).
You can never have too many proof readers!