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The Human Experience Dies With the Street lamps
Long time no see! You’re looking well - attractive even - thanks for tuning back in for more flattery.
I sit writing this from a stressless recliner and as I stare out at all that worldly beauty, I couldn’t feel more rage.
The romance is over. Owen Wilson’s nose would be too sharp and Mia Farrows hair too thin to film in this. In an environment this sterile, we will never know what Woody Allen had in store for the two (ageing) bombshell blondes.
Have you seen the new streetlights?
Surely they’re why he’s so rubbish now? Or perhaps possessing the guilt of a public pedophile hiding in plain sight siphons away creativity.
To whoever was behind taking away my lovely low-pressure sodium lanterns and replacing them with bright white LED lampposts, realise I’m never wooing the famous singer 1000 leagues above my depths now. The dream is gone. She’s going to see my patchy complexion and thinning temples like I’m sat in a dentists chair. My playful dancing just comes across as odd when I’m being x-rayed in the interests of safety. Mr. Romantic has gone into slumber for the foreseeable.
I’m going to have to return home before the sun sets; I can control the hue here - the dawn of a new era.
My evenings will continue to be full of love and long conversations in the glow of a small desk lantern and a low-slung floor lamp, it’s worth the isolation.
“Oh Harry? He doesn’t leave after sundown. He also insists on calling it sundown, like a cowboy.”
If I do need to pop out after sundown, I’ll take the car and wear a hat.1
Goodness, how myopic of me. Someone’s going to flash to let me out of the driveway and reveal what’s behind all three layers of skin.
Have you been flashed by modern LED headlights? Did your retinas leap out the back of your head? It’s nonsense, lights do not need to be this bright.
I’m just like you; on a drizzly, moonless night I struggle to see the verges of rural roads. But here’s a suggestion - and stop me if I’m being absurd - slow down. I’d rather experience that dreary, dark evening in all its glory than isolate myself from its reality. Traveling through Bodmin Moors in the heavy fog on the way to catch an early ferry, eyes fixed to the rear lights of a Mustang, is etched into my memory. The rise and fall of the valleys, Kid A playing quietly in the background (turned down for +5 vision). If I had modern headlights, I would’ve passed the Luddite.
Why can’t we experience darkness anymore? Are we terrified of what we might find?
Engineers continue to isolate us from the outside world and we thank them for it. Initially a noble endeavour, they protected us from all that cold and all that dark, from predators and frostbite and pneumonia and fear of the unknown but now we sit inside, environmentally bored.
With the use of more triple glazing, external insulation, underfloor heating and, to my personal horror, autonomous vehicles, we are being insulated further from the human experience.
If they get your anechoic chamber just right, you won’t realise you’ve soiled yourself.
It’s not in the mind of an engineer to accept decline. The train of progress must keep chugging along and as a result, we receive needless lateral development and a whole lot of tinkering because this locomotive can’t climb any higher.
2016, as I see it, marks the absolute height of human achievement. We could lark around in space, hold the entire little rectangular world in our hands, and chase Pokemon through the streets. We party rocked until our heels cracked, it was the greatest of times.
10 years later, it’s a fight to ‘soften’ the experience for the user. The human experience.
As a young Brit, they first came for my freedom in 2016, then they came for my freedom in 2020, and then they came for my freedom in 2026.
I wonder what they’ll take next.
Somewhere, probably, a proud engineer proclaims “Maybe one day you won’t even have to use hands to interact with the world”.2
We will evolve to not have fingers or hands.
We are evolving back to fish.
Don’t trust the robot devil.
So while you have your hands, grip life by the horns, ride it hard andddddddd…
I just hate LED lampposts.
Till next time sweet cheeks.
Potential cowboy name: Harry the Hat. Ask readers for opinion
Steve Jobs’ last words.