An Internet Made of Wood

I am sitting my couch at 3:00 AM in the middle of a fresh bout of insomnia and I am having the following thought:

All the technology that all of us deal with all day is not reality.  It’s a fiction that we invented and that each of us individually has decided to believe in.

There was a alternative universe that existed before all this technology that has grown up in the last 15 years or so came to be.  People read books, played music on acoustic instruments, went to plays, read magazines.

Most of us barely do those things any more, of course, except maybe my neighbor Del here in Montana.  Del is 85 and fixes cars illegally out of the garage in the back of his house.  Nobody messes with Del because he fixes all the cop cars in town, too.  I don’t know if Del has a computer.  I kind of doubt it.

Anyway, I’m not saying that all this technology is necessarily a problem.   And I’m not romantic about the past.  I just noticed myself believing that all this shit all around me is real.  But it’s just in my head.

I can just choose to adopt an alternative reality.  I can just say, “I’m done with the internet” and “fuck email!”.  Man what a relief that would be!

I’m not thinking about doing this superficially.  I’m talking about actually waking up one morning and looking at the world and deciding that those things are not real for me, period — that  I choose a different reality.  I choose not to participate.

I keep thinking about how very quiet that world would be. Maybe I’d sleep better at night.