“So digital is all 0’s or 1’s, of course, that’s what makes it digital, and analog is a variance.” I stared.
Of course.
My housemate, Danny, a successful tech entrepreneur, was trying to break down the scaffolds of AI power sourcing.
His mouth kept moving—onto China, onto scarcity pricing, onto international games of chicken. My eyes focused on his salted beard, on the kind eyes, on the flower-printed tablecloth… on the evening sky, the stars settling in. Smells of maple-syrup ham, pesto-dressing. Empty places at the table, empty jars of mayonnaise; flaking splinters of chairs.
Of course.
Naturally, he had lost me five sentences before. The AI enigma would have to wait.
0’s and 1’s, though… or a variance. Huh. I cradled the words, briefly, before letting them flit away, gypsy fireflies of words and letters; I had long runs to complete, miles to finish.
The words returned Sunday night, though, body abused and exhausted by the third week of hard training. The dogs had come to my door to beg; I had given in, despite my “best self” knowing that diets were involved. Naturally, I had returned to a familiar cycle of abusive rhetoric. The need to immediately apologise, to beg for eternal forgiveness, sprang up: IhadfailedIhadfailedIhadfailed. I had known the rules, had known her expanding waistline, and I had given her half a mini-biscuit anyway.
What a schmuck. What a disappointment. What a betrayal of trust.
Biblical verses of “faithful in small things, faithful in big things” came to mind… parables of talents, of perfect responsibility, of loyalty. Protestant work ethic, competitive guilt, etc. Even as the maelstrom of reproach flurried about, though, Danny’s words came to mind.
What if… what if life wasn’t digital? What if real humans weren’t, actually.. all 0’s and 1’s? What if it wasn’t All or Nothing, Success or Failure, Paragon or Sinner? In theory, not a radical concept… in practice, much more complex.
Learning to let go of the need for immediate reprieve; to let dissipate the demand for instant validation, for external forgiveness. Accepting that maybe… maybe I could uphold honesty… and fail sometimes, too.
Maybe, as the world gallops further and farther into the Digital Age… with technology weaving farther and further into all aspects of our lives… accepting maybe us humans will always be analog. Or, at least, I will. And maybe that will feel scary, and isolating, and hard.
And maybe that’s okay, too.
Because, on the Digital Scale, Bon would probably get a 0 for swimming coach success… but on an Analog scale, she gets a 0.8999999 for being awesome.
And if that’s enough for her, then that’s enough for me too.
The Amazing Adventures of Brett & Bonnie 