I’m reading at Prahran pool, it’s that lethargic part of January in which anything goes. Then I checked my phone for messages coming from beyond the climbing frame, checked in with the pacifying spread of headlines, scandals, archaic regressions, the latest on World Ice, before powering it down as part of my renewed effort to be present with my girls, the protagonist of the book open in my hands confesses. Amused about the resemblance of this statement to Em’s New Year’s resolution, I underline it and send a photo off to her. The photo disappears into a cloud and lands in her hands quicker than I can process a new thought. Then, a woman with a British accent two towel lengths away says to the small cluster of women she is sitting among that she left her phone at home today because she ‘just wanted to enjoy the pool’. This is a sentiment I have noticed gaining momentum in my own body and in many of the bodies around me. Might we be seeing the toll of the Information Age?
I type ‘Information Age’ into an ethical search engine, the ethical search engine I started using since a woman in my class who writes copy for Kookai looked at my laptop open on Google and said to me, it’s two thousand and twenty, it’s time to search ethically. At the time I thought she might have worked for this other search engine as the words sort of sung out of her like a rehearsed jingle. Every time I type something in, a tree is supposedly planted, though this sounds too good to be true. According to the ethical search engine, The Information Age, also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age, is an ongoing period in our history that started in the middle of the 20th century in the wake of the industrial revolution. The Information Age is characterised by a shift from more traditional modes of industry established by the industrial revolution to an economy and consciousness dictated by information technology.
Over cold glasses of beer under an established elm, a friend comments on all the bizarre modes of transport moving up and down Gertrude Street. I nod, noticing the flashy scooters, electric cargo bikes and no-push skateboards moving all around us. Over the past few weeks, I have found myself deliberating over whether to replace my stolen E-bike or purchase a Vespa. I have been evaluating the pros and cons based on efficiency, cost, and ease of travel. My friend does not approve of either option. You should save your money and just get a regular push-bike, which has done us just fine up until well, just now apparently, he says looking around again -visibly agitated. I nod, recognising the appeal of old-school simplicity but knowing deep down I will purchase the electric one because it makes the whole riding thing just easier. And a quote from Jenny Offill’s book, Weather, pokes me at this moment sitting under the established tree:
the invention of the car was also the invention of the car crash.
One Sunday evening while walking home from the cinema through the backstreets of my suburb, I observe the car crash in plain sight. It’s a sequence of observations, really. First, I pass a Tesla showroom, opposite which is an accident repairs centre. Then, not much further down the road, I observe a boy -four max- playing with a shiny remote control Tesla toy car. And, much like when you wake up thirsty in the dead of night and sense a terrifying apparition lurking in the corner of your kitchen, I experience the fear of something unknown, something far bigger than me. I can see the crash about to happen when I catch up with my eldest brother who is anticipating his second baby, exhausted from work and gripped by an impatient, anxiety to enter the housing market. A tightness in my chest is characteristic of these car-crash moments as I am confronted by the succession of man-made things, the unnatural physical and psychological spaces, we have imposed and continue to impose. How I wonder does one wake up, step back, say, no, Monster, you cannot eat me.
Ava and I discuss the Information Age from a small cabin two and a half hours south of Melbourne. It happened quickly. On Tuesday night we are sitting on her deck in Richmond drinking gin and tonics, feeling clammy and forlorn as the cases continued to climb into the tens of thousands. Then, on Wednesday morning we are filling my car with wine, comfortable clothes and all the books. The beach house is elegant but not precious, situated high on a bushy hill overlooking the water. When our mothers call inquiring about our health and our holidays, we reply fine and indefinite. On evening number one I gaze out over the water to a thin stretch of sand and smooth mountain range, which Ava tells me is Wilson’s Prom. There’s an easterly so the water is all white peaks and wild. She hands me a gin and tonic with garnishes she plucked from the garden herself. I take a sip and flinch when the rosemary sprig slides up my nose. On the deck, we lean back into the chairs while the white peaks and the word indefinite drench our bodies in calm.
Ava says the Information Age is the entire -artificial- ecosystem we are living in. I nod, thinking about this eco-system of perpetual hustle, consumption, comparison, tension. We recognise these landscapes may appear physically as food courts, gyms, and Ikea showrooms, which we can, if we want to, minimise our exposure to. However, it is the psychological landscapes that are increasingly difficult, almost impossible -even here at the Magic Beach- to turn away from. It is waking up and feeling inundated with headlines that read ‘how to take a photo of Wednesday night’s super moon with your smartphone’; theatrical gender reveals of unborn children; images of avocado toast garnished with edible bouquets; dogs in Halloween costumes; the radio saying the Taliban’s captured Kabul while your phone plays a video of makeup immaculately applied using the end of a banana. It’s the feeling of the whole world pressing against you and demanding your attention. Turning away from The Information Age, the pacifying spread of headlines, scandals, archaic regressions, is counterintuitive. It’s like flexing a muscle we don’t have.
The technological progress characteristic of The Information Age is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has radically changed lives for the better and enriched individuals, whole societies and enabled a more globalised planet. But on the other, it has created a world that is far more complex and increasingly challenging to navigate. I catch glimpses of the toll in the clients I touch base with on the phone during the day, the friends I chat with intimately, and the general public of this city as they move up and down escalators, wait at traffic lights and open their phones just because. Some will remark about low moods, umbrella-worry or that they can’t quite put their finger on it. Others express explicit disillusion, exhaustion, boredom and/or burn-out.
In an article found in Forbes, Brian Bri, former software engineer at Google, warns the rise of the internet within the Information Age has enabled ‘new modes of social interaction that the evolution of our primate brains didn’t equip us to handle’. He identifies the conflict in the way we are supposedly more connected than ever while at the same time lonely, burnt out and starved of genuine human attention as well as interaction with natural habitats. Bri explains we are right now witnessing the gradual move out of The Information Age and into what he calls The Age of Reckoning. This ‘reckoning’ he speaks of involves substantial bouts of introspection and sacrifice. Two muscles The Information Age of distraction and convenience seldom exercise. ‘We are going to have to look inward and confront some uncomfortable truths about human nature, understand the fact that technology can amplify both the best and the worst aspects of it’.
Today I see the Age of Reckoning being taken up by writers, artists, thinkers. Three books on my desk as I write this speak directly to these issues. From Patricia Lockwood’s, No One is Talking About This and Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You to Charlotte Wood’s The Luminous Solution. When I take these books to bed, it feels like someone running a brush through my hair or a therapist sitting across from me saying I hear you, I feel this way too! Several times setting out, as well as in the middle of writing this piece, I closed the document, feeling daunted by the enormity of it all, unsure about what exactly I was trying to say other than offering my own slightly nihilistic disillusion. But I think this dialogue, which takes issue with The Information Age and gives language to the toll are the first moments of the reckoning.
Time ploughs on; Ava and I return to the city with temporary immunity. In the week that proceeds, we voice memo back and forth. The messages are intoned with a distinct disillusion I attribute to all the concrete we can see; the stark lack of blue and greens and white peaks. Then, one Sunday at Fitzroy pool, my quandary with the Information Age manifests in the lane next to me. I’m in the shallow end stretching my hamstring and staring at the large Aqua Profunda calligraphy suspended on the deep end’s wall. At first, I think the woman has earplugs in that look a lot like headphones until I realise they are in fact headphones that have circumvented the natural way of things. I watch her click something on her Apple watch, put in the second headphone, slide a cap over her head and take off down the lane. Up until this moment, I thought the pool would, for the most part, remain an unscathed arena to the advances of technology. The knowledge of the headphones connected to the watch connected to the world impales me in the shallow end a while longer. And sure, it has crossed my mind before that it would be nice to occasionally listen to a podcast or song when swimming, especially on those mornings I lack rhythm and motivation. But I think, in these brief forty-five minutes of my day, I owe it to myself to resist easier and maintain this space analogue.
Yellow Days 