Confessions of a Pixel Pusher

I was doing my taxes recently and the tax software I use initially takes you through a series of questions, the answers of which help to determine how your tax return will be filled out. One of the first things the software asks is whether or not you've experienced one or more life changing events in the past year. It's the same type of question an insurance or financial expert would ask you to determine what your next move should be.

Marriage, birth of a child, loss of employment, and death of a spouse. They want to know if you’ve experienced the very things in life that change your life, your place in the world. Things that give you reason for pause or dictate your next step, whether you like it or not, and alter your reality. These are things of magnitude and importance.

And for the life of me, I cannot think of one thing, let alone four, in the online world that even comes close to the life-altering magnitude of marriage, starting a family, loss of livelihood or death. Those things can shake you to your core. The web might make me click a little harder but it just doesn’t move me like that.

For all the hype, promise, money, time, talk, aggravation, elation, and connectivity we put on the Internet & technology today, it just doesn’t seem to measure up to the offline world, the world of flesh and bone, when it comes to the real stuff. The messy stuff. The good stuff.

I say this not as a rant against technology. I make a pretty decent living pushing pixels around a screen so I can keep a roof over my head and food in the fridge (at least for now). And yes, the online solutions I provide help people to work and stimulate the economy and keep the planet from falling off its axis and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I get it. And every once in a while I can still be surprised and entertained by something I make or see on the web.

But, more often than not, the things of the online world merely prompt a shrug or shiver. The web is cool, and I mean that in all the various definitions of the word cool. But there’s nothing there that approaches the magnitude of a birth of a child or death of a spouse. Those are big things. Cool seems so small in comparison.

I'm leery of the culture we've built around technology and the web these days. Our love affair with tiny circuits sheathed in molded plastic, widgets, apps, and big, beautiful Photoshop-enhanced imagery. The kind of love that blinds us to its obvious and real flaws in favor of immediacy and convenience. Or worse, steals our attention away from what is still flawed in our world or ourselves. The kind of love where we accept good enough in place of, well, good. I know. Nothing is perfect in this world. Least of all love.