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Authors: Nick Harkaway
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on. Many of these know that they will not get our attention – our focus and engagement – at work, so they call when they know we will be at home. And in doing so they intrude on something very important and fundamental.
The feeling ofinformation overload seems to consist of a small parcel of sins, of which the first is noise – and not just ordinary clatter and bustle. It is a noise of the mind, the relentless howl of the exterior world, possible only because technology is an open pipeline into our lives, and more specifically into the hearth: the place which is set aside for the things that matter. The word ‘hearth’ – the old word for a fireplace, which evokes notions of the duty of a host to a guest and vice versa, and which proposes an almost medieval life of wood ovens and pre-industrial simplicity – has a primal feel which is I think entirely appropriate to this discussion. This is very much a personal, instinctual thing.
It need not be a literal fireplace, but consciously or not we take the notion of ‘hearth and home’ very seriously. We really dislike anything that threatens the sanctity of the hearth, even by doing something as innocuous as crossing the threshold by phone or email without permission. Ask yourself how annoyed you get about telemarketing calls, or – a step up – how irritating it is to have a guest who outstays their welcome. More seriously,consider how much stress you feel about mortgage payments, or renovations, and, by contrast, look at how many people were prepared to get themselves into vast, irredeemable debt in order to secure a permanent home. Look at the power of the political pledge to enable us to buy our own homes, and at the number of revolutions and wars begun with the promise of land. The hearth is where we do our real living, it is what gives meaning to the hours we spend working and administering. It is our most profoundly personal place, a definitive statement of our identity as well as a component of it. It’s our reward: the ‘life’ part of the work–life balance and the centre of domestic fulfilment. It is – or time spent there is – to some extent the thing preserved by philosophies of ‘slow’ evolved to combat the hectic pace of modern life. The hearth is where we play, in the broad social and philosophical sense of the word; it is where our humanity is initially learned and ultimately asserted. Intrusion into the private space of the hearth is the most unsettling and unwelcome of invasions.
Except that, in a way, it’s not an invasion at all. The hearth, once a very simple, solid thing with discrete boundaries, has been extended into the world. The telephone allows us to reach out; the television allows us to see out; the computer allows us to search, to send messages and so on. We have positioned these things within the compass of the private space, and extended its reach. At the same time, we have made it somewhat porous. We have extended our personal space into the digital, storing images and parts of our history, interacting online. We make common digital spaces with family members overseas, with friends in other locations. We even shop from our living rooms, allowing a limited amount of the commercial world to enter our homes. We have extended the hearth to meet other hearths, and to connect with the aspects of government, media and commerce which are designed to face the private space.
The benefits of the extension are profound; the openness theyrequire is, if not a vacuum, at least an area of low pressure, into which capitalism and administration have naturally flowed. Much of what digital technology does, good and bad, is achieved by a kind of blurring of the lines. We have blurred the boundaries of our most important spaces, and done so deliberately if not knowingly. We now have to learn to control the tide, to push back against the inward pressure. The boundary between the world of relaxing baths, partners and children, dogs, and the
The feeling ofinformation overload seems to consist of a small parcel of sins, of which the first is noise – and not just ordinary clatter and bustle. It is a noise of the mind, the relentless howl of the exterior world, possible only because technology is an open pipeline into our lives, and more specifically into the hearth: the place which is set aside for the things that matter. The word ‘hearth’ – the old word for a fireplace, which evokes notions of the duty of a host to a guest and vice versa, and which proposes an almost medieval life of wood ovens and pre-industrial simplicity – has a primal feel which is I think entirely appropriate to this discussion. This is very much a personal, instinctual thing.
It need not be a literal fireplace, but consciously or not we take the notion of ‘hearth and home’ very seriously. We really dislike anything that threatens the sanctity of the hearth, even by doing something as innocuous as crossing the threshold by phone or email without permission. Ask yourself how annoyed you get about telemarketing calls, or – a step up – how irritating it is to have a guest who outstays their welcome. More seriously,consider how much stress you feel about mortgage payments, or renovations, and, by contrast, look at how many people were prepared to get themselves into vast, irredeemable debt in order to secure a permanent home. Look at the power of the political pledge to enable us to buy our own homes, and at the number of revolutions and wars begun with the promise of land. The hearth is where we do our real living, it is what gives meaning to the hours we spend working and administering. It is our most profoundly personal place, a definitive statement of our identity as well as a component of it. It’s our reward: the ‘life’ part of the work–life balance and the centre of domestic fulfilment. It is – or time spent there is – to some extent the thing preserved by philosophies of ‘slow’ evolved to combat the hectic pace of modern life. The hearth is where we play, in the broad social and philosophical sense of the word; it is where our humanity is initially learned and ultimately asserted. Intrusion into the private space of the hearth is the most unsettling and unwelcome of invasions.
Except that, in a way, it’s not an invasion at all. The hearth, once a very simple, solid thing with discrete boundaries, has been extended into the world. The telephone allows us to reach out; the television allows us to see out; the computer allows us to search, to send messages and so on. We have positioned these things within the compass of the private space, and extended its reach. At the same time, we have made it somewhat porous. We have extended our personal space into the digital, storing images and parts of our history, interacting online. We make common digital spaces with family members overseas, with friends in other locations. We even shop from our living rooms, allowing a limited amount of the commercial world to enter our homes. We have extended the hearth to meet other hearths, and to connect with the aspects of government, media and commerce which are designed to face the private space.
The benefits of the extension are profound; the openness theyrequire is, if not a vacuum, at least an area of low pressure, into which capitalism and administration have naturally flowed. Much of what digital technology does, good and bad, is achieved by a kind of blurring of the lines. We have blurred the boundaries of our most important spaces, and done so deliberately if not knowingly. We now have to learn to control the tide, to push back against the inward pressure. The boundary between the world of relaxing baths, partners and children, dogs, and the
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