Now № 4

I’ve mostly been spared the weirdness of 2020. My living room is now my office, travel plans have been shelved but otherwise all is ok.

I’ve been trying hard to balance some form of digital minimalism with a general obsession with gadgets, information and being connected.

I think I’m almost there with my system. I’m using Freedom to block Twitter and Reddit on my devices during the evenings and weekends. Instead, I read books and saved long form articles. This leaves me relaxed and better informed.

Reading

In the theme of digital minimalism, I read the Age of Missing Information. Despite being 28 years old and about TV, the central ideas are relevant today. In short: mass media has created a culture of low quality information. Highly recommended

In the design world, App Sprawl by Frank Chimero nails a lot of things I’ve been thinking about. The apps I enjoy using are focused and simple. Most apps are becoming unmanageable behemoths.

Watching the US from afar has been disorienting. Near and Present Anarchy from the Baffler is a long, thought-provoking read.

Listening & Watching

Christine Ott’s Chimères is a beautiful album: complex yet simple.

In Pursuit of Silence covers an important topic: the need for silence. Our cities and their sounds are slowly driving us mad, we’re over stimulated. I think the film could have been put together better and covered deeper topics (I would have liked to hear more from the religious forms of silence). Still, it’s a good place to start and inspirational for devoting at least a bit of time each day to silence.