Welcome
Hey all, welcome to my blog. I’ll be writing about technology, culture, interesting thinkers of the past and present, and my journey as a developing UI/UX designer.
I’ve had this Substack parked here for a while but haven’t quite known what to write about. I generally note a lot of things, topics or mysteries I’d like to delve into at some point in the future, but rarely do I get back to them and build them into publishable pieces of writing.
A blog should have a sort of theme, and for a long time I couldn’t really see one I was following in my thoughts or writing. I took the title from a Yeats poem I’ve always loved puzzling over, and I knew I was going to roll with it. I just wasn’t sure what I was going to write about.
I have a theme now, or at least an inkling of one; I think there’s enough there that I’ll be able to bring it to life with time and effort. It’s about a different way of looking at technology, more specifically, the technology we use to share information and communicate with each other. I want to look at the tools we currently have, who built them and how using them affects us as human beings — not just in terms of electromagnetic radiation or dopamine reward pathways — but trying to take in the long view, sub specie aeternitatis.
Can our current technology help us escape certain pernicious aspects of the human condition? Will it help us to better understand ourselves and each other? Will it help us reach new heights of being? Or will we continue to distract and confound ourselves with endless scrolls of trivialities, sleepwalking past the mysteries and delights of Real Life™? Will we continue sinking into digital serfdom in a new, LED-illuminated Dark Age, ruled by distant witches and wizards in humming towers and databank citadels?
This is what I want to find out. But I’m not in a big hurry. It’s a bit of Leunig trip, best taken slowly, with many a cup of tea along the way.
I also just miss putting my writing out there. This comes from a mostly selfish place: I’d like to be able to think better and more clearly about the things I’m interested in. I suppose I do want to share them with others too. But writing in public helps me to organise my thoughts — a bit like when you’re expecting company and you’ve got to get your messy room into a state of order. I want to explore this theme not as some armchair’d and disinterested observer, but as someone whose day-to-day work and leisure is heavily mediated by modern technology… for better or for worse.
I’ll be weaving in my own personal experiences with technology and user interfaces I come across in my travels, as well as my learnings and observations as a rookie UI/UX designer. To mix it up a little I might include the odd hiking report. It’s good to get away from the computer now and then…
That’s probably enough of an introduction. I invite you to join me on this venture through ideas!