Sometimes it feels like the computer ate my mind. I am not talking about the large language models we call “artificial intelligence.” I mean that the computer has lured my attention into its electronic embrace with a most compelling bait: curiosity. It’s shifted some of the way I interact with the world from an experience of senses to an experience more like a download of information. I walked through mist of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches; now, information is a deluge. The world has not stopped being interesting. So much of it comes to be through electronic mediums rather than direct experience.

Oh the things my eyes have seen! Many of which were not directly in front of me. I’ve seen the gas well in Turkmenistan they call “the Gates of Hell”, Dubai from the top of the Burj Khalifa, seen Buffalo from the steeple of both St. Ann’s and the abandoned Cargill silos, and listen: I’ve been to none of these places. But they are as embedded in my memory as the moment I stood in my garden and watched a hummingbird pass.

My own eyes have seen humpback whales, Rodina Mat’ Zovyot, the Adirondacks, and countless beautiful people, some of whom live in my house. I’ve seen feet of snow and run my hands (and shovels) through it. I’ve swam in two Great Lakes and in two oceans. I’ve lost track of the animals and vegetables that I’ve tasted. I’ve heard so much music, mostly recorded. Some of it live. I’ve performed some of it too. Life is rich and my memories catalog everything I’ve experienced in a beautiful hazy sea.

Previous generations had the same concerns about the television, didn’t they? The kids keep finding simulacrum of the world, and diving in. Boxes of electrons keep commanding our attention. I need to give my mind space to expand. I need to disconnect it from the satisfying surge of tidbits of information and let my attention sit on a single thing for a time. The internet is a blessing and a curse. So many delightful facets of my life, especially the people, found me through this sea of information. Increasingly I’m finding that the internet is best consumed by the glassful and not by the ocean.