Ephemerality

I have always been a proponent of appropriate, specialized, "do one thing but do it right" tools. Something like Unix/Linux command line tools philosophy. Don't hammer a screw in, don't open a can of soup with a screwdriver or scissors. So, I did my computing (that's my profession now), e-mail and web browsing on a desktop with two large monitors (which were separate from my TV), navigated via a Garmin navigator, took photos with one of several digital cameras (from a tiny pocket one suitable for having in your coat pocket at all times to a far more serious but still very far from professional one), read my eBooks (no, PDFs are not eBooks) on a succession of proper eInk Kindles, listened to my music on largest capacity hard-disk iPods (or which I still use several and have more spares) and, most importantly, made my phone calls using a phone - you know, one of those things with buttons (those of you who shouted "rotary dial" go into the corner and be ashamed of yourself.)

Then, the slide down the slippery slope began. First I got an Android tablet with my fiber to home bundle. Well, it fit in coat pocket, made checking mail in a cafe possible, and the proverbial embarrassment of riches of good navigation applications were either free or cost all together less than Garmin's map update subscription. Hmmm. 

You know where this is going. I am still writing this on my, well, not desktop but laptop, but with external keyboard and two large monitors, read on Kindle and occasionally hunt for a nice scene with a Sony camera, but when people at work practically made me take a mid-range Samsung Galaxy smartphone, I succumbed.

I am still annoyed by the lack of buttons. But, I started browsing through blogs and content recommended by Google or offered in notifications from the sites I frequent in bed, during lunch break, and, of course, while in the loo. Concentration of everything, for lack of a better word, is seducing. But what I very soon realized is that everything is meant for just the most fleeting moment of interest. Everything is like Instagram and Snapchat "story" items that disappear if you blink. Notifications are gone after you follow them, and if you were led down some rabbit hole of links reading an article there is no way to start over. There is no "forward" button to undo "back". "Feeds" in YouTube or Quora refresh themselves with new content before you digested the old. You get my idea. Everything is like the "breaking news" ticker tape down the TV screen.

I found myself using "share" button a lot, sending mails to myself with links to content to be perused later, at leisure. That's just wrong - if I still need my laptop to actually read what I found interesting, what's the point of my "information concentrator"?

So, here is an idea for you budding app developers: make a library, an "information attic" app for us oldtimers to send everything from large essays in Medium or Aeon to pundits blathering in The Economist to news on Space.com and ScienceDaily to YouTube videos, Facebook posts and Quora questions and discussion items on all of them to one place, from which we can retrieve and digest them at leisure. You know, when we are out of the loo and are comfortably reclining in our armchair with a pipe and Lagavulin. De-ephemeralize our content. And make it syncable to "normal" browsers, so that we can use our tablets, laptops, desktops and Linux supercomputers.

BTW, have you noticed that every "social" platform after a while resembles Facebook? Even Quora and LinkedIn? And that discussions on YouTube and Facebook and Quora are far more difficult to follow than on the good old Usenet (and its successor Google Groups) or especially on proper discussion board software? (I admit, I tried neither Reddit nor Discord.)

Ah, well...