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Ode to an Alphasmart

October 4, 2014

Currently Reading: This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jalloun

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(The book mentions this very spot: Jemaa el Fna, in Marrakech)

I’ve been horribly lazy in keeping up with the blog. I was a week in Tangier (my hostel perpetually reeked of hashish, but was right next to the tomb of Ibn Battuta!) and am now in Marrakech for week, where I’ve found a good café to write in, and someone to play chess with.

 

October 10th

Now in Essaouira for a week. The hostel is criminal. Not because there is no soap in the bathroom (though it is concerning) but because of this.

 

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Using a book as a wedge to keep a bed steady. Bad form.

 

 

It’s a bit of a mission in each city—finding a newsagent that has English newspapers, or French newspapers that report international news but I’ve managed so far.

 

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Why bother with newspapers at all in this day and age, when the internet is everywhere?

For the same reason I write this on my Alphasmart.

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BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS EVERYWHERE.

And I am weak.

So weak…

 

If I read news online, then there are links to other things, also interesting and relevant. And those interesting things have links to other things equally interesting, and less relevant, and on and on down the rabbit hole I go till I’m watching videos of baby horses splashing around in paddling pools and I realise I’ve been on the internet for 3 hours and have read only a few worthwhile things (and several lists about signs you are in your 30s.)

I’m so easily distractible, and when I just want to read the news, it’s safer just to read a hypertext-less newspaper, made of actual paper. Just as when I want to get some writing done, I do it on paper or on a internet-less machine.

And for those of you who don’t know what an AlphaSmart is, voila.

So, it’s not curmudgeonly antipathy to technology that keeps me devoted to the old-fashioned, it’s the desire to be at least semi-productive.

 

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