when i was 18 and worked in africa for 12 months, email hadn’t really happened, the internet wasn’t something you had at home. so i spent a year in that place, and was totally there - there was the distraction of an outside world, but only passively, once a week through airmail newspaper or occasional letter; my community, my world, the thing i could actively act within, was wholly there.
this i thought, as i got out the laptop on top of a cliff in french corsica, pointing the evdo stick across the waters to italian sardinia and the 3g networks i could hopefully get a line of sight on, to check email and post this… at once having a break from ‘life’ and definitely not.