Week 4: Power Outage

So this week my phone died -for good. I'm not entirely sure what happened; insofar as I can tell, the internal wiring of the power jack was damaged, which resulted in a slow, drawn out death as my phone exhausted the reserve of energy in its battery's final charge. This was a bit of a problem for me because my phone was a very important tool in my archaeological arsenal. It was my primary timekeeping piece (I never really got into watches. Usually they just seem redundant), my navigational tool, a functionally effective translator and, importantly a vessel for audio-books. Although I couldn't make use of them during the dig, I was plugged into one at any other moment I wasn't free to actually sit down and read something: walking, mostly, too and from work, to get groceries and other supplies, while exploring the city and while traveling outside the city. As it was, it was too important for me not to have a phone by the end of the dig at least (for international travel: not having ready access to information while at airports always leads to trouble, doubly so in different countries) so I had to make arrangements to get a new one. The fastest turn around time I could manage was a week, which turned out to be more along the lines of two and a half, so in the mean time, I had to make do without.

Now, I'm sure that many people would be thrilled to be forced to put down their phones, intellectually at least, and given my discussion of Zen last week, you might think that I was one of them. If that is the case, you would be wrong. I did receive encouragement from my brother to be more present when listening to the sounds of the city, but to be honest I was not very eager to be sensually present in a city with a terrible noise pollution problem, especially after an intensive initiation to it while I was trying to sleep for the first couple of nights before I bought some earplugs. Really, I kind of feel that the whole idea of "unplugging" to be a bit misguided. I mean, by all means, if you feel that you are spending an unhealthy amount of time on the internet then stop: readjust your lifestyle accordingly. Notice, though how I phrased it. I have seen many people frame the problem as "the internet is hurting you," but that just isn't the case. Technology doesn't do anything: it's a tool, not an agent. The internet doesn't care whether you spend every waking moment on it or if everyone in the world decided to unplug at the same time and left every server farm in the world to rust. What matters is relationships: your relationship with yourself, with your peers, with technology and with the rest of the world. Technology can change the relationship, but it certainly is not inherently good or bad. Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Mein Kampf were both written with the same tools in the same environment by the same kind of animal. The tangible, objective realities were largely the same, but the relationships of the agents, both subjective and inter-subjective varied wildly.

One of the first lessons you learn as a historian is to identify relationships. How did x affect y, how was person a related to person b, how did such and such historian relate to this or that event that he wrote about? Human's relationship with technology is one that is hotly debated: you can have two experts about some technology or other, while one is an anarcho-primitivist, while the other is a techno-utopian. I personally have been satisfied with neither extreme, not because I don't see their points, but because I think they are missing the bigger picture. Technology, by in large, doesn't change the relationships that people have with most things. That is why, as a historian and a classicist, I am still in business. War is hell, whether on the plains of Ilium or the jungles of Vietnam. Cult leaders, whether with wood-carved print pamphlets or Twitter accounts turn people into suckers the same way. The ephemeral, soul crushing pain of lost love feels the same whether eulogized in a Latin ode or a Youtube video. There's probably some good stuff that stays the same too, but those are boring. My point is that I don't need to force myself to "unplug" from my phone, because I already cultivate good relationships with the digital and analogue worlds both.

Oh, in other news: we found a head this week! By we, of course, I mean someone else. The rule in archaeology is that whenever something interesting is found, it is found by someone who isn't you. Way of the world. I would post a picture, but the whole publishing rights business is a bit trickier than I'm comfortable with, so I found a suitably representative substitution from the internet.

It was like this, except different

Sincere Regards,

Michael