What might isololation mean and look like?
I admit it was a spelling mistake I made while writing and drawing about digital loneliness and isolation, but the mistake made me so curious I even made a website about it ( isololation.com ) … What might isololation mean? Here are a few of the things I’ve considered
Text and drawings by Frits Ahlefeldt
Blindspot 2.0
The man on the podium talks about our perception. How we are getting more and more adapted to looking at screens — And less and less able to look at anything else
And I remember that I’ve learned that we have a visual blindspot in our eyes.
A tiny point where the optic nerve connects our eyes to our brains, sending visual data impressions to our brain.
In this point we can’t see anything, so we construct reality there, and I wonder if today we are reversing this.
Only seeing the screens and a “blindspot 2.0” where reality used to be… I start to draw it up
Could this be isololation?
Toddlers are fed apps, as much as food
The experts still can’t agree what looking at screens will do to our children and how it might influence their cognitive development
But they know that more and more both parents and babies are watching screens while interacting — Even while eating.
The toddlers are more quiet, and eat the food without complain.
All their focus is on the screen, watching apps, YouTube videos and cartoons, while the parents get a few minutes off, so they can look at their own phones. Almost like we are feeding our children digital food, as much as real… I start to draw it.
Could this be isololation?
Hiding in a digital comfort zone
Looking at the screen has become second nature now for most of us when-ever we feel insecure or challenged, bored or just lonely
Walking onto the bus with my backpack and sketchpad, I notice it is almost full and nobody seems to looks up from their phones… Just the ones staring blindly out of the windows, listening to their headphones.
Is it a way to avoid contact, or having to listen to, or relating to the passengers around us?
I sit down… And take out my phone. Both my ticket, my travel schedule, my stories, and my friends are in there… “I could be drawing” I think… But soon I am as digital gone as the rest in the bus.
Could this be isololation?
Shipping the last worker
Covering a story about how shipping companies are replacing workers, using robots instead — I realize…
I met them, both the robots and the workers. While hiking through small harbor towns I keep seeing them sitting, still in their old work clothes, alone in front of screens in their small houses and containers. Boxes close to the harbors where they used to work.
Could this be isololation?
The cloud conductor
Most social media wants us to focus on the relationship we have with it
Just us and it…
But it suddenly dawned on me that it might work almost like a cloud based conductor — silently making each one of us play our part.
Main difference is that we can’t hear the whole orchestra — Only the artificial intelligence in there somewhere can do that. We all relate to it more than through it…
Could this be isololation?
Shopping in the clouds
Every month we buy more and more online. Starving local shops and cafes, connecting to the clouds instead. Soon, we’re promised, drones and robots will find us and hand over new stuff even faster
And I hear the reasons: It is easier, cheaper and more secure ( you can always send it back) People shop from their home, connecting to the clouds, instead of to something around the corner…
Could this be isololation?
Relating to trees online
A new browser will plant trees the more you use it. And both web shops and social media follows the same path — Offering to plant trees if we stay online
Forest bathing is a different thing, it is about going into the woods and breathing together with the trees, switching off phones and relating, hugging and talking to them
will it take off?… or will trees instead become something we relate to on screens more than not
Will we sit alone and tap on a screen to build forests too far away to visit IRL ( in real life) ?
Adding forests to the planet to stream live on a screen and share on social media?
Could that be called isololation?
Social media watchers
Huge question now is who is watching who when we are watching screens
The tech giants pays the bill and let us in for free. And somehow they become extremely powerful and all knowing through this.
Very few of us understand why and how the information they collect and store about us, and our relationships, habits, positions, moods, preferences, networks, jobs and so on… what all this can be used for.
But we are starting to understand that the screens and Artificial intelligence and cloud-based servers behind them watch us at least as much as we watch them
Competing realities
Many of us wish we could, know we should and hope we can spend more time outdoors in nature with our kids. But for most of us it just doesn’t move in that direction
Even in the woods we feel we need to look at our phones… To get things of our minds, to check the direction and GPS position, and to share the great moments we have with the kids, and beautiful landscapes we pass through.
But also to make sure we make it home in time and that we have activated the alarm, locked the car, put on heating and answered the invitation…
The phone in our hand too often get most of our attention.
Not because we want it that way… Wonder if it is because it wants it that way?
Is it isololation?
I am still not all sure what isololation means, or where our phones are taking us or what we should call it.
All I see is that they are taking us somewhere else, somewhere that is a bit like isolation, a bit like I-phone or i-something, a digital place where we are kind of together, while all alone. Somewhere we have not yet been able to grasp or define…
