> I walked Brooklyn. At best, everyone was funereal. At worst, in tears, inconsolable. It’s impossible to overstate just how dour the world felt at that moment.

> I walked Brooklyn. At best, everyone was funereal. At worst, in tears, inconsolable. It’s impossible to overstate just how dour the world felt at that moment. > The entire city — country? world? — had been infected by a terminal disease, the prime vector of which was memes. > Simone Weil writes, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” Then is the lack of attention the opposite? Does it presuppose fear and hate? - - - I think there’s really something to this. I have to admit there have been a number of times I’ve been caught up in something “tragic” on the internet, generally some political battle, and felt like the world was falling apart. But then if I step away from the computer and go for a walk in the nearby park, I see hundreds of people just relaxing and enjoying life, not caught up in the daily trivia. I often bring my kids along and watch them just run and play, carefree. And I sometimes wonder: if we just turned it all off, shut down the internet, radio, and TV... would we be happier? I’ve lived through a few long power outages as well, (1 day or longer), and on those days, rather than things feeling dire, things felt light and playful. The neighbors all came out and chatted, the kids all played up and down the street. It was nice. I realize that our world would not function very well without the mass communication systems that link us together. But I also wonder if something like a scheduled, controlled, power outage every Saturday would be really good for us all.