Automotive readouts used to be about how we moved through space. Now they're about data gathered from sensors, abstracted about our movement through space. (There's a subtle difference.)
Shiny, glowing screens with only razor thin bezels.
Sleek, form fitting fashions, neologistically dubbed "athleisure-wear".
Consumer grade AI devices, housed in discrete pods that sit unobtrusively on kitchen counters.
The surfaces of our world are losing their sense of friction or texture. Refined surfaces beguile the unwary into believing that they are closer to some sort of aesthetic apotheosis, when in fact those refined surface are doing little more than covering the world in artificial shells. Creative people are always trying to perfect their visions, but not all visions need smooth edges or studiously polished reflectivity. Yet with every smart phone multi-touch gesture, every box of delivered, pre-organized groceries selected for your authentic “cooking experience”, and every bar-coded nectarine in the grocery (requiring you to fingernail it away from the fruit), the real world gets a little further away.
When music started to tilt away from air moving over wood or metal surfaces and towards an electronic sequencing of mathematical expressions, we began to hear things that reminded us of classical or jazz compositions, but actually…weren’t. Computers make our sounds now; there’s no more spit on bamboo reeds, no more slide oil to keep our brass tubing moving back and forth. These days our electronic devices calculate our moving images and color our photographs. One wonders how far away we are from algorithmic electronics synthesizing our food. When foods start coming from fully automated lines that run from bio engineered laboratory directly to our polished tables, will we even notice?
Some aspects of these perfected surfaces have profound allure, of course. Some promise opportunities and benefits. I’m ready – – today! – – for autonomous cars to speed my commute and eliminate the choking exhaust of internal combustion engines idling at the top of highway ramps. Shiny surfaces that eliminate the humanity of day-to-day driving makes sense. But I am not ready to give up on face-to-face meetings over small tables, with friends sharing warm loaves of French bread passed around at supper, traces of olive oil and herbs clinging to crackling crust. I am not willing to read a book of poems on a glowing screen.
I find it extraordinary how many of you, dear readers, actually know the word “bezel”. I made the reference in the first line of this essay and many of you didn’t even notice. Somehow this specialized word from the world of manufacturing and industrial design--commonly used in watchmaking-- passed into the common argot during the last handful of years. The fact that it’s even part of our day-to-day vocabulary tells us just how much the objects to which bezel evaluation pertains have taken over our lives. We evaluate the thinness of our bezels and hardly even consider the implications of the messages contained within their boundaries. Language always follows needs and desires. Where we once needed to give peace a chance, feel the music, rise up, or join hands we now wonder if our bezels are flush to the edges of our screens. And, to be truthful, I must confess that mine….are. I fear I’m becoming one with The Borg.
How far away do creative people fall when they eschew anything but perfected surfaces? What happens when we no longer appreciate the smear of real paint? Once the tangible materials of our physical world gets sequestered from our actual hands, it won’t be long until we no longer appreciate the smear of things like lipstick, too, or the sensual glow of sweat earned in a day of physical labor, or even exercise. I, for one, do not want to find myself in a dark jazz club listening to pre-recorded music while seated next to a video screen of a beautiful person. I prefer the textured reality of all that real humanity entails, including stories about where each of us comes from, what we like in our coffee, and the delicate balance separating easy conversation from feeling out of sync. I want to believe in the humanity of the musicians on the small stage, lifetimes of skill radiating out from their wooden and string instruments. I want to be distracted not by some device beeping or vibrating, but instead by someone’s wispy scent, derived perhaps from flower blossoms that have been pressed for essences and touched to warming skin. Or, perhaps, there’s no perfume involved at all. Perhaps the other person simply….smells good...
There are no shiny surfaces that compare.