Abha Dawesar: Life in the Digital Now...

http://www.ted.com/talks/abha_dawesar_life_in_the_digital_now.html

This is a fascinating talk By The novelist Abha Dawesar, I feel it encompasses my current project and explains that there is a need to address these issues of living in the digital world and loosing connections with the physical world. It is an issue and this now, present and increasing. This talks supports my own opinion and addresses some of the issues which in my opinion are dehumanising us at an alarming rate.

Key points:

• The self no longer exists
• The author was effected by hurricane sandy, she had no electricity like half of her town, she explains that, her included, were desperate to go into coffee shops to charge their appliances, "being wired is up there with food". This was a very strong point, in our world now we rely on technology so much, this put things in perspective for Dawesar and is what encouraged her to think this way. 
• There are more people in India with access to phones than toilets.
• Technology altered the flow of time
• We are never going to know what it is like to comprehend a millionth of a second yet computers get more and more developed and we record more data that the human brain can never comprehend
• We answer only to natures flow, to the rhythm of the sun, but technology allows time to warp
• we need times arrow to understand cause and effect, not just in the material world but in our own intentions and motivations
• time doesn't flow in the digital world like it does in the physical world
• We live in the digital now, the challenge is to live in two streams of time that are parallel and almost simultaneouss.
• How do we live inside distraction
• she remembers being taught about the planets by her grandad when she was a child, getting on his shoulders and interacting with him. Now a child could just google that information but that is not the same kind of learning. 
• now a days everything is archived, we clutch to static moments, love is attention,
• The digital world cannibalises time, and in doing so it threatens the completeness of ourselves, threatens the flow of love
• We can slow down and tune into the flow of time, we can choose to take time back

My interpretation of this talk is that, this information is in no way saying that all technology is evil and we should regress back to chalk boards. It is addressing the issue of dependence on technology getting in the way of what it is to be human. the digital now is always ahead of  time, we are human and our time is physical it is easy to loose these physical connections to time and in doing this we loose the attention and the flow of love, dehumanising us. 

It is this connection to the physical world which I am interested in approaching from an artistic perspective. My aim being to create a short restbite away from technology and fast paces living, and rebuild some of these connections to the physical world. I believe these connections are what keeps us human.