Modernity

The Guardian has an article about Going Offline is Fun. It’s about how “young” people are trying to disconnect from mobile phones and other technology. There was another article about how 61 million CDs have been sold as people buy physical media rather than digital copies.

When the web and social networks were young and built around communities rather than the cult of personality (aka Influencers) it was rewarding because the more time you invested in a community, the more you became a part of it. It was also a time when no one was online, so you had to spread the net very wide, globally, to find like-minded people.

Every single time I go from driving an EV to driving a petrol car I am struck by old fashioned and smelly old cars are compared to new ones. In this context an old car is any car that has a petrol engine rather than an electric motor.

I had to play musical cars just now, and put the winter tires into the petrol car, to get them swapped so that I can drive in winter safely. In the process I had to move two cars around so that the petrol car is in front.

This morning I noticedd that a wine Cave is having an event where they will make noise but it will stop at 22:00 because the law requires them to stop at that time. In the 21st century anyone can buy a loud sound system that could fill a village with noise pollution, and that’s one of the problems with modern life.

For the last four nights I have been unable to sleep before two to three in the morning because the local music festival, the Caribana had their speakers on so loud that I could hear them despite having two fans on full power, laptop speakers at full volume and even airport hearing protection.

For years now the noise in this village has been frustrating me. It is the noise of industrial cutting. The noise of an angle grinder on metal, of a circular saw on bricks, stone and wood. It is the constant wail of a circular saw cutting into something, every few seconds, or minutes, for hours at a time, for months at a time. 

It is the reason for which, instead of opening windows I turn on a fan and swelter in summer. It is the reason for which I don’t open the window and close it at night. It is the reason for which I have gone from having windows open the entire time there is daylight, to keeping them closed.