Still Possible

did it even make sense to compose an anti-technology manifesto on an internet-connected device? Would I be able to resist the pull of email, news, and “research” in a time of unbearable stress? No, I needed to write my book the old way. I needed to prove it was still possible.

The artist and writer August Lamm — who gave us a great interview in Issue 18 — lives and works without a computer or a smartphone.

That’s what her forthcoming book is about and, obviously (or perhaps not), it was written by hand.

She’s not the first to do this. Mark Boyle used to submit his Moneyless Man column to his newspaper each month, hand-written. And as August herself says, this was how all books were written prior to the 1980s, albeit not as a form of tech protest.

Doesn’t this take absolutely ages? No, so says. Because one of the advantages of writing long-hand, she says, was to rid herself of internetty distractions:

Distraction is not a new thing, of course, but I think we can all agree that there’s a difference between old-school distractions—looking out a window, flipping through a book, tidying the office, calling a friend—and modern ones.

I wouldn’t mind reading a book whose author compulsively snacked, or smoked, or paced the room after every page. I do mind reading a book whose author was inundated with the voices of a thousand other people, platforms, brands, algorithms.

It’s a good point. Let’s keep the algo out of our literature.