Friction is the great stabilizer. We need just enough technology to enable creation while constricting our attention to the gusts of other content.
The emergence of shiny new apps and devices often throws our work into disarray. Sometimes it’s the basic pen and paper (typewriter, anybody?) is all that’s required to induce focus.
The same “less is more” philosophy applies to consumption. We are more likely to be distracted when reading on the smartphone than perusing a physical book. How many Kindle books go unread due to other attention merchants (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) intercepting our thinking?
On top of this, who owns those digital books should Amazon cease to exist? We build up pixel libraries only to see our rented objects disappear into the dustbin of cloud servers.
The frustration of the digital world lies in its unfettered Balkanized packaging, where platforms may remain agnostic but resist PDF neutrality. We can’t finish nor find anything anyway because of the confused mass. The internet never ends.
Our work and collections need a type of slowed-down linear simplification. Books, music, NFTs – owned, created, rented, and consumed – move at a tremendous pace of novelty with most pieces, like our attention spans, scattered and promptly forgotten.