WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist offers counsel to a reader overwhelmed by apps, dings, and beeps.
Few of those positive connotations survive today, and yet the resurgent nostalgia for dumb technologies is often spurred by a not entirely modern desire to distance oneself from the bustle of the polis and the frenzied commerce of the agora. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that, despite the widespread celebration of smartness, many of us secretly long to know less.
Idiocy should not be confused with stupidity, the willful refusal of information that might disrupt one’s rigid convictions. The latter is rooted in a pride that makes it the inversion of smartness, not its alternative.
I bring up the fool in part to stress the virtue of “dumbing down” as opposed to opting out. As appealing as it might be to live totally off the grid or leave civilization, it’s practically impossible to emulate Thoreau’s retreat to Walden .
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