Premonition 02: Offline as Holiday

With former travel removed or feared, 'to go offline' will become a holiday.

To release the pressure

We need a holiday

If we took a holiday

Took some time to celebrate

Just one day out of life

It would be

It would be so nice

Madonna, Holiday (1983)

Going offline has been through waves. The first were soft retreats. Minor dropouts, brief and novel recalibrations, ready for more overwork. A few days away from email, perhaps integrated into some yoga, meditation, and whatever other Eastern remedy of choice. The second wave was more painful. Offline became punishment. The space we were banished to for spending too much time online. Being too long on the 'grams. 'I need to log off' we said, once the dependancy became too clear. Except, the discomfort of the disconnect itself was too much to bear.

'Coming out the other side' – whatever that may mean, whatever that may hold – meant enduring intense withdrawals. And if you cannot see the point, there is no reason to subject yourself to such excruciation. We are past that now. Onto the next phase.

The overexposure to the online during lockdown produced a new sickness. Sick of distraction. Sick of hyperconnection. Sick of over-information. We got sick and to the ill, offline is health. The offline is holiday. The offline is rest. The offline is real. Back in touch with who you are and who you want to be.

Hope. Focus. Security. Sanity.

Holiday.

– – – – –

Premonitions are a series of critical foresights by Ruth Les. The scenarios and ideas are concerned with possibilities, not probabilities. ‘…We should not be confined by the probable. We should discover the possibility hidden in the present.’ – Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

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