What do I miss about technology most? Match of the Day and my parents’ voices
These are strange times. I remember once, a few months before I rejected industrial-scale technology, searching online for an image of an old, disregarded variety of apple. Hoping to make a positive identification, I instead encountered a screen dominated by the trademark logo of the Apple corporation. Taken aback, I typed in blackberry and orange to see what would happen. I was offered mobile phone deals. I hadn’t heard of Tinder at the time, but I suspect the indications of wood shavings, birch bark and bracken wouldn’t monopolise your page.
Six months later I read Robert Mcfarlane’s Landmarks, his remarkable, place-particularising contribution to a “glossary of enchantment for the whole Earth”. In it he revealed that words such as acorn, ash, bluebell, conker, dandelion, kingfisher, otter and pasture have been replaced, in the 2007 Oxford Junior Dictionary, by words like block graph, blog, bullet point, celebrity, chat room and cut-and-paste. The Oxford university press explanation – that these are the things that now comprise a child’s life – was pragmatic, understandable, honest and deeply worrying.
The Facebook (or is it now Snapchat?) generation will hardly miss conkers, having never played with them. It’s odd – when I was growing up on the working-class council estate on the edgelands of a struggling town, no one ever thought to ask me if I missed anything about the natural world which my culture was doing its very best to reject. At the moment I choose bluebells over bullet points, and it seems everyone wants to know what I miss most about machines.
I could stick my tongue firmly in my cheek, and say that more than anything, I miss traffic jams, insurance forms, debt, buses, stress, deadlines, spam, schedules and pollution, but that would only be being facetious and telling a half-truth. The full truth is that of course I miss some things, particularly stuff I’ve taken for granted for most of my adult life. I didn’t grow up like Huckleberry Finn. Living hand-to-mouth during my formative years had its own challenges, especially for my parents, but it was a different kind of tough to the challenges I face every day now. Back then we were all in the same boat, and there was a real sense of solidarity among neighbours; now it can sometimes feel like I’m swimming against a tidal wave, all the while being reminded of things which part of myself once enjoyed.
So what do I miss? A thousand little things. I’m a recovering Manchester United fan (since the days of Ralph Milne – who? – if that is any defence) and so not only can I no longer watch Match of the Day, I don’t even get to find out the scores on the rare occasion I clock that it’s a Saturday. No one will ever love hand-washing bedsheets, especially without hot running water, so once a month I dream of 30C spins as I scrub and wring. Sometimes, after a long day shifting manure on to vegetable beds, I would love to jump into a hot shower, but have to make do with pouring cold spring water over myself with a jug. Trust me there’s nothing romantic about it (unless, that is, I spend an hour firing up the hot tub and have a soak under the Milky Way sky still visible out here.)
When I’m tired at night I still remember enough about hot chocolate and Netflix to make John Muir’s wilderness essays seem less fascinating than I know they are. On busy days I can still recall – only too well – the ease of things like gas cookers, mobile phones, internet access, electronic music, fridges, freezers, cheap flights, electrical lighting, a quick text, days off with nothing to do but flick switches; in short, I can still recall a life lived vicariously through a seductive array of mass-produced, homogenous, soulless conveniences.
Some days I miss one or more of these things. Most days I don’t. I’ve lived in the city, I know its temptations and delights, its sugarcoated allure and its buzz – and what I am saying is that, on balance, I would rather shit in a composting toilet and eat roadkill pigeon.
You see I’ve never claimed that technology doesn’t have its appeal. Of course it does. Even the Luddites would have agreed that the machines which were obliterating their cottage economies were more efficient than their own hands, in the short term at least. What is less understood is that every new technology comes with its own intended and, more importantly, unintended consequences. Marketing departments only ever advertise the attractive, sexy, exciting aspects of their new absolutely essential products in their frantic, relentless pursuit of “maximising your happiness”. They sometimes seem to forget to explain the harmful, negative impact on people, society and the natural world. (I studied marketing for four years, and I can promise you that there is no darker art. Bill Hicks had sound advice.)
All technology comes at a price – the only question is, are you happy to pay it? Personally, when I tot up the cost of industrial technology, I put away my wallet. The mass extinction of species, climate catastrophe, social breakdown, mass narcissism, widespread mental health problems and obesity, factory farming, soil abuse, loneliness and ecological separation – well, if that’s the real price I think I’ll give Game of Thrones a miss, and wash my muddy clothes in the hot tub instead.
I have no wish to romanticise the past, or my life without the technology. It can be tough. Some days it is really tough. This morning, while out “wooding”, I walked the equivalent of 7km, most of which was with a fat log on my shoulder. That was before breakfast. Later I might cycle 40km to go fishing, and return empty-handed and hungry. I often miss not hearing my parents’ voices and, what makes it worse, I know they miss mine too. But I made the choices I made for reasons that I feel are more important to me than convenience. And most days I’m gladder for it.
Despite knowing little of the bloody, mucky realities of landbased lives, techno-utopians will want you to be careful of those who may seem to romanticise the past. On this, I agree. But be even more careful of those you romanticise the future.
• This article was written by hand and posted to an editor at the Guardian, who transcribed it to go online. Get in touch with Mark Boyle here or in the comments below, a selection of which will be posted to him.
• Mark Boyle has lived without technology since December 2016. He is the author of books including The Moneyless Man and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi
On balance, I would rather shit in a composting toilet and eat roadkill pigeon