From The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, on the story of digital progress:

Our world would be successively rendered into bits and bytes, one program at a time, until we reached a state of digital utopia, or the Terminators came for us.

The Revenge of Analog presents a different narrative, however. It shows that the progress of technological innovation isn’t a story of a slow match from good to better to best; it’s a series of trials that helps us understand who we are and how we operate.

This brings to mind an analogy to evolution by natural selection. It’s often misunderstood that evolution represents a sort of upward progress to perfection. The reality is that it is progress toward reproductive fitness, integrating whatever allows a species to propagate. An evolved species is not ideal in every way. Rather, in some ways it may be worse off than its earlier iterations. (See Breath by James Nestor for examples of how our evolutionary adaptations have actually devolved our breathing functions.)

Technology evolves, but its latest iteration may not be ideal in every way - may be worse in some important ways. This is where human judgement about the purposes of life and technology must engage, refusing to allow ourselves and our world to become slaves to our technology.

Plans for the next issue involve cardboard and spray paint.

This is a great presentation by Doug Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope, on the way people can begin repairing ecosystems in our own yards. I often feel my powerlessness to do anything about our rolling ecological disasters, but this offers a way to do small-scale, realistic good. I’m excited to get started on expanding the native species plantings in my yard. The presentation, by the way, was hosted by Sycamore Land Trust, an awesome local nonprofit that is protecting land from development one plot at a time.

Fantastic documentary: Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

I received my order from Half Letter Press, which focuses on booklets and independent publishing. Check them out, lots of interesting stuff there.

The IRS will require you to use ID.me to access your taxes online. Last year, ID.me was locking people out of their unemployment benefits due to facial recognition failures. I had to set up an ID.me account to opt out of the child tax credit advance payments and it was indeed a cumbersome, annoying process. What really bothered me, though, was giving so much critical information to a third party contractor.

Chilly hike at Spring Mill State Park today

Worth watching. I didn’t know anything about her previously. Colette

Rob Sheffield says the CD revival is here. I’m going to stick with collecting records for now, but this makes a good argument for the CD. “Look, CDs will never be as sexy as vinyl albums. I get that. … Really, there’s only one thing CDs have ever done right, which is make music. They get the job done, which is why they’re still around.”

I’ve set up a page for a zine I recently completed. It’s a collection of some of my poetry from the last few years and it was a lot of fun to create. Lots of hunting for public domain images and futzing around with my copier. My favorite part was creating the winter haiku page. I had already written the haiku so I googled phrases so that I could print the text and then cut it up ransom note style. In any case, head over there for a pdf download and subscription information.