Life in a Box

The days are getting weirder. I think that I am living in a 2D world more than in the 3D world. Here, everything is boxes. Square, squircle, rectangle, rounded rectangle and what not. Not that I am living in a high-tech society where everything is managed by glowing square and rectangle boxes but, my interest in tech and keeping up with it as much as I can have enclosed me in these glowing rectangles.

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Drink water? Go to the bathroom? Let me tell you what I am doing. I search for my phone as soon as my eyes are opened in the morning. That is pretty messed up. These boxes have become so involved in my life that I can sense that I am not carrying one around. It feels like I have forgotten to drink water or something similar.

During high usage these boxes don't have very useful things to offer as well, most of the things are just dopamine inducing content that makes you feel like you have laughed or learned something, but it only lasts until the next video starts. But I still shift from one box to another. From my phone to my laptop and then my TV and back to my phone, my life is roaming around.

It is not that it only has negatives, from talking to our loved ones to sharing what you have learned to sharing the thoughts that come to your head, everything is done within the boxes, and it is faster and easier too. Even "social interaction" is a term that in lies inside the glowing boxes nowadays. Perhaps too much of anything is always bad, and "everything" includes the glowing boxes too.

Because of these boxes, apparently the generations are divided by the tech literacy than by time. The behaviors of "Millennial" living in a developed country where tech adoption is fast may be similar to the "Generation Z" living in a developing country where tech adoption is slow or the family who's tech adoption is slow.

I am a Gen Z myself. Though, I have grown in the age of iPhone and Facebook. I was only introduced to these after 2013 and so were my parents. This makes me feel too young, but Windows 11 was the OS that I used for the first time in my home computer. Though that was the OS when we bought the laptop after I enabled beta updates as soon as I got it because of the "techie" I was, and the second day Linux was my main OS, and it has been the same since then. And since everything I watch and everyone I follow are Millennial Tech Geeks, I have become to be this way.

The glowing boxes and keeping up with the latest tech news has made me who I am, but the influence of the people who are privacy focused and whom I follow has made me hesitant about things like "proprietary software" and "big tech". Though it is a good thing, I hesitate to try out new things as they come out. It's a dilemma that there is so much to learn in the world of boxes, but there is also a happier and healthier world to learn about and live in. Only if there was a way to merge the two, which seems more disastrous as I now think about it.

So, how do I manage my life in these glowing boxes and my life outside? No, I am not writing about how I manage my life (lives?). I am asking you. It is a very difficult thing to do as a student with all his resources in the form of videos and PDFs. I conclude that self-control is the most essential skill a human needs, and what I need to do is to develop it anyhow. A simple 'ping' or 'ring' should not make me go and pick up a box to eventually get me to doom-scrolling. How's your life like in a box?