Note on Thingness via Mandy Brown

The table does not change—at least, it does not change at any time scale that is noticeable to the human who sits before it. I do not need to pay attention to the table, because nothing is happening with it that requires or even asks my attention. I can simply trust it. I can turn around and turn back, and even with my eyes on something else, I can reach for it and know it will be there, exactly where I left it.

Screens, of course, lack any such sameness or stability. Screens are inconstant, unsame, unstable. A screen demands my attention—not only via the regular chirping of notifications, as hungry and unrelenting as a baby bird—but through that fundamental inconstancy: I know something may have changed since I last looked at it, know I cannot trust it to remain the same, to be steady or faithful. I must be vigilant towards a screen, always on alert, suspicious.

FROM:

Mandy Brown

Thingness

Source

Appreciate the stable, not just the novel.

This call to larger-than-human timescale reminds me of The Overstory.