I got a horrific e-mail this morning.
It wasn’t from a debt collector.
It wasn’t from work telling me I’m sacked.
It wasn’t from a long-forgotten acquaintance telling me I have children I don’t know about.
And thankfully it wasn’t bad news from family or friends.
No, it was from Apple.
Apple. Telling me about their wondrous new watch. “Answer a call from your surfboard” they instructed me, rudely.
Will I fuck.
The last thing, the very utter last thing I want to do whilst surfing is answer a damn phone call. Or send a message. Or check my e-mail. Or do anything bloody else that involves staring at a screen for one more second than I possibly have to.
Is nothing sacred? Is this what we have to look forward to?
I’m not an aggro guy in the water. Most of the time I actively try to avoid confrontation. But I promise you this. The first time someone starts having a conversation with their watch in the line-up I’m not sure I can be responsible for my actions.
If lots of smarter people than me are to be believed, people like Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil, and Stephen Hawking, then we are standing on the precipice of The Singularity. This is the inevitable moment in the future when man and machine will converge. We will no longer be distinct from our devices. Smartphones become wearable. Wearables become implants. Bio-technology becomes obligatory. Human beings become obsolete (if they’re not updated).
I’ll be honest, it scares me.
But at least we’ll have surfing, right? Well, apparently not if Apple has anything to do with it.
Surfing is already my last bastion of escapism. I’m not willing to give that up.
Recently, I went on a trip with virtually no cell signal for a week. It couldn’t have been better. I was forced to tune into the world. I noticed things. I was made to lift my head. To savor moments of extended focus. To experience the joy of boredom! And to lose myself in one, singular task at a time, like simply surfing, or eating, or reading.
It wasn’t easy at first. I was sure I was missing things. I was sure that apps needed urgently refreshed and vital information was begging for consumption.
But I was wrong.
I didn’t really miss anything at all. And I felt better. Unbelievably better.
When I got a connection again my screen looked tired and dull. I didn’t want to refresh anything, I didn’t want to do my routine checks of apps. I didn’t want to be drawn back into the dependency.
But of course, it didn’t last.
We live at the beck and call of our devices. Hypnotized by our screens. Tied to notifications with invisible threads that wrap around our focus, pulling us away from the world. Do you ever get phantom vibrations in your pocket? Do you ever find yourself staring at your unlocked phone, only to forget what it was you needed to look at? Ever wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself reaching for your phone, only to cycle through your app routine as if being controlled by some kind of autopilot?
I don’t want any of this to infect my surf experience. We live enough of our lives connected, I still want surfing to be about disconnection.
