John Wiercioch
  • Home
  • About
  • Painting Gallery
  • BUY ART, CONTACT
    • Commissions
  • Drawings
  • Essays / Blog

Reflections on the Art of Living

The Cloud and the Ant

8/8/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
Although I already intended to share this here, I have to smile when I actually pause to notice the Facebook prompt: What’s on your mind? Here we are, so fully  immersed in our abstracted, digitized-data driven world, that we need not only answers to our questions about how to get to our friends’ homes, or what a word means, or the answer to some other trivial tidbit of information plucked from a trillion data-bytes in some symbolic cloud, we almost fail to recognize these tools have begun to ask the questions for us. 

How wonderful — soon we’ll no longer need our own curiosity! We’ll instead be prompted to ask only particular questions that fit within the parameters of our interests based upon the algorithmic personalized frameworks (prisons?) we’ve nurtured by the other questions we’ve been asking for the last decade. In my desperate attempt to be rebellious, I never use Siri (conveniently capitalized just now as if it’s a proper noun by my auto-correct). I suspect this resistance is futile and matters little, as every time I’ve “killed the mystery” or made the decision to not try to use my own memory and typed something into the Gooog, it got registered and saved somewhere. Like it or not, our “online identities” have essentially become databanks of useable, “valuable” (AKA: profitable), manipulatable, likes and beliefs. Maybe it’s just as well, exposing the fragility of the concept of our uniqueness.

I do recognize the irony, that I’m not only making use of the technologies in typing this but in a more involved way, sharing “my thoughts” via social media. Convenience and technological efficiency always have trade-offs. So using this keyboard and internet connection sits within me with about the same degree of satisfaction as the convenience of driving my car a long distance does compared to the trade-offs of walking the journey. I get there faster and with less personal energy, but the convenience of my driving “costs” the world far more energy and I miss out on an incredible array of experiences and opportunities to grow. 

By typing this onto Facebook, I reach more folks with whom I may share my thoughts, but never get an in-depth face to face (or I should write in-person, "bodily presence to bodily presence" because we also have this "facetime" thing that I also almost never use) discussion using this route to communicate. Do we even consider how much is missed by sharing only via screens? What of a friend’s body posture, the touch of a hand, the warmth of their voice in response, the exchange we receive through their felt presence?  Clearly I'm a bit conflicted about it all. 

Yet what about books? Or handwritten notes? Don’t they also dilute the sharing? Writing one's thoughts out in any form is different from and begins to alter the experience of sharing our thoughts through speaking and dialogue. It's a trade-off that humans have accepted since we began mark-making as a way to share concepts eons ago.  

Clearly I don't have answers. But I am glad I still can formulate my own questions. And I don't intend to ask Doctor G, or that upstart new intern, AI, for a response to them. I like the type of clouds I can see reflecting the sunshine, hovering against the clear blue this morning, the kind that carry my mind beyond itself, and real water that sometimes gets dumped on me, splatters against the rocks, hushes the noise, cleanses the earth, and nurtures life. 

I prefer wandering my own mindscape and landscapes—like the ant in front of me, making his trek up and down the Black-eyed Susans that I cut earlier and placed in water from a cloud somewhere. They seem content enough, as the sunshine touches them, fulfilling their roles within the larger scheme and manifesting their duties, each in their own way, yet indifferent to their individuality. It seems it might serve me better to look to them for guidance, instead of disembodied digital voices or pixels on a screen…
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    About ​John's Blog

    ​
    Writing offers an opportunity to clarify my thoughts and feelings. Often these relate to my art and may offer insights about my work. I learn from engaging with others and welcome comments. 
    ​

    All

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    October 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    November 2014

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly