Remember to look down
Photo credit: Louis Magnotti via Unsplash
I had two astonishing experiences while travelling recently.
First, I got on a plane in one country and, some time later, stepped out in another country.
Second, I tapped my phone against the reader on the local metro system and paid for my fare, even though my bank was thousands of miles away.
It might seem that neither of those things are astonishing, but I think that fact is astonishing in itself. It is remarkable how quickly technological miracles become a mundane part of our lives, and we cease to notice how unusual they are.
Take my first astonishing experience: the flight. These days, when we book a flight, we often fixate on the superficial aspects of travel. How far away is the airport? How long will it take us to get there? What will we do while we are hanging around waiting for the plane? Who will we be sitting next to? What will the meal be like? Does this seat recline any further? And we forget that, while we are worrying about these things, the large metal craft is lumbering down the runway and, through a careful combination of skill, engineering and mathematics, taking to the air.
Fortunately, even though it is easy to lose our sense of wonder in the midst of the trappings of commercial air travel, there is one easy remedy: look out the window. I find it easy to forget about what my meal tastes like or how much room there is in the overhead locker when I look down and see the world spread out below me. Even when the plane is above the clouds, I only have to remind myself that we are above the clouds to feel the same thrill that I experienced on my very first flight.
It can be harder to find that same thrill when tapping your phone on a turnstile in a metro, but for those of us who work with technology, it is possible. We can imagine the network traffic whizzing down the cables, out onto global networks and around the world at near the speed of light. We can picture the large, complex (and sometimes slow and scary) core banking systems churning away and confirming the transaction. And we can visualise all the little bits that have changed slightly in the world to reflect that I have paid my fare. And all in the fraction of a second before the turnstile opens.
Unfortunately, unlike flying, this mental image is usually less accessible and less exciting to those people who don’t work in technology. I think this is a shame, partly because I believe that our digital world would work better if everyone understood it better, but also because it obscures a source of everyday wonder.
Perhaps we should borrow a lesson from the experience of flying. We cannot create a similar, visceral experience of looking down on the world from a great height, but we can conjure it up in the imagination. When we refer to a plane as ‘flying’ we do not mean that it flies in exactly the same way that a bird flies. Birds don’t have fixed wings, or jet fuel or wheels. But when we are up in the air, we think of ourselves as flying with the grace and freedom of a bird, even though we are strapped into a seat in a hurtling metal tube.
Maybe we shouldn’t refer to protocols and data formats when describing digital experiences. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about operating systems and coding languages. Maybe, to engender a sense of wonder, we should point out that the reason that the metro transaction works is because humans have taught rocks how to think: we have etched logic onto silicon in a form which can encompass all the mathematical possibilities of the universe, and have arranged for quantum particles to circle the world at the behest of the user. Maybe we should try to create a sense of narrative vertigo, an appreciation that, while my phone may be thin and flat, in its own way, it contains as much depth as the space below a high altitude flight. And that depth is just the beginning: it is the entry point to worlds that go much deeper and much wider.
This might be a whimsical and futile thought. In your next project meeting, while explaining to your non-technical sponsor why you have missed your milestones, it might not be helpful to explain that the magical thinking rocks have not arrived, or that you are having trouble wrangling the quantum particles that you fling around the world. But I do think it is worth trying (perhaps at a less tense moment) to find that sense of wonder and to conjure up the reality of the world that we are creating.
Modern humans have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years. We have only had powered flight for just over one hundred and twenty years. We have had electronic computers for just over eighty years. It would be a shame to lose the wonder of them so quickly. The remedy is to look down - even if it takes a little imagination.
