Abstraction versus Reality
On the fantasy of trading a screen for a farm
essay
I think about the farm fantasy sometimes, the one where you quit and go grow vegetables. It’s not really about rejecting technology. It’s about wanting your effort to leave a trace again. Half of what I do in a day disappears into abstractions - a bug fixed, a metric moved, a notification cleared - and none of it is visible the next morning unless I go looking for it. Plant something and water it, and by the weekend you can see the difference.
So maybe it’s not technology versus nature. It’s abstraction versus something you can put your hands on. I can live through a screen fine. I just don’t fully believe I’ve done anything until I can touch it.
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