I am not against technology. I am writing this on a machine I love, in a program I have used for fifteen years. My worry is subtler: what the tools do to the texture of a day.
A day used to have grain. The mail came at ten, the paper at seven, the news at six. There was a rhythm of waiting and arrival, and between the arrivals, a great deal of plain empty time. Now every channel is open at once, and a day has become smooth, a surface with no places to rest.
I do not think the answer is to go back. It is to put the grain back by choice: fixed times for the news, a single window for messages, one device-free meal a day. These are small, almost silly rules. But they restore the edges between things, and an edge, I have found, is where attention can get a grip.
