The future is now, or at least that’s what most people would tell you. What just 10 years ago sounded like sci-fi, is now part of our everyday lives. The world is at our fingertips almost everywhere we go. But enough clichés. Let’s talk real.

Two months ago, me and my husband bought our first touchscreen handsets. We replaced the “outdated” keypad phones with smooth and sleek ones. The first week we would stay late in the night, exploring “just one more feature”, “just this cool app”, each of us in their corner, staring in the small screens for hours.

When all the fuzz was gone and these became just phones with more games and occasional use of wi-fi, I gave it a true thought. And it started to hit me.

Keypad zen and touchscreen madness

While I had my old phone, I had learnt to use it very quickly: I open the fold, press a key combination and in an instant I am at the right menu item or dialing a friend. I had learnt the exact time I have to wait until I move to the next character while typing an SMS message, and for any other frequently used functions.

But with the touchscreen, this is almost impossible. First, you always need to unlock the screen. Then it’s the lag from all the images changing, dimming and fading effects (although I’m not using most of them and have a plain black theme, it’s still a problem). You also need to fix it in portrait or landscape orientation, otherwise it’s constantly trying to follow your hand’s position and again lagging and blinking.

Although the touchscreen might seem to be intuitive and more “natural”, it lacks tactile feedback. You can’t navigate through the menus or write a message without looking at the screen. Period.

With my old keypad phone, I used to type a whole SMS message, choose recipients and send it with no need to look at it. Using the phone in the sunlight was also no big deal, because it was enough to just see part of the screen to know exactly what I was doing.

The touchscreen makes it much more difficult – you can’t feel which key you’re pressing, the vibration doesn’t help you much, and there is lagging which causes more typing errors.

Slow dialing

The most frequent use of my phone is speed dialing my husband. With my old phone I was doing it maybe 10 times a day – I think of it and in the next second the phone is dialing:

1. Open the fold

2. hold 7

3. hi baby

4. bye baby

5. close the fold.

Now it’s like that:

1. take the phone from the pouch

2. unlock the screen

3. look at the screen

4. open the Dialer app

5. press and hold 7

6. hi baby

7. bye baby

8. press End call

9. lock the screen

10.phone back to pouch.

Two times more operations. And each of them requiring attention and more time.

A touch of life

You might think I sound like a stupid chick. Maybe you are right.

But give this one a thought:

All phones sold in Europe support the so called S.O.S. call. Even if your phone is locked, with no SIM, no balance etc., you can still dial 112, it automatically unlocks and dials. If you can’t see the phone, there is a small bump on the 5-key, and you can easily find the 1- and 2-keys. You dial 112 in a second.

But that’s the old-fashioned, keypad phones.

The touchscreen phones require your attention. S.O.S. calls are made slowly. Death-causing slowly.

Keep that in mind.

The track is very moving, with its unique athmosphere and vibes… so Scandinavian, so Swedish… You can feel the loneliness and beauty of every tone. Hope you like it too

Fever Ray’s Last.fm page

This is one of my favorite photos. It was made in Bulgaria, in the Rhodope Mountains. It was a lovely foggy day and the two cars and house matched perfect together.

This is one of my first photos. It was made in Bulgaria, in the Rhodope Mountains. The dam is called Batak and it is one of the most beautiful places around. Some people say that the clouds in the photo resemble a flying turtle.

I simply don’t want to own too many things.

How many times have you watched the films you own on DVD? I bet, no more than once. So why would you need to clutter your home with things you’ll only use once?

The same goes with books — most books I have read I will never go back to, and even if I do, I prefer to have them in a public library. It can be digital or real, but the key point is — it’s time to stop just owning things, and start appreciating them.

Consumerism doesn’t have to be all about owning stuff. Why don’t we just consume? Just use the stuff we need and then return it back for the others to use. It’s better to pay a couple of bucks for a cinema ticket and really feel the story, than to buy expensive audio and video equipment and loads of disks and end up with some technical problem.

Owning stuff has a lot of downsides. You need to maintain, to repair and take care of it; if you are moving to some other place, you have to think what you’re gonna do with all the things you own. Storing is a problem too: some people have whole rooms filled with stuff they’ll never use again. But they can’t throw them away, and it’s too complicated to give each piece away. So they end up with a room of useless stuff that is tying them back.

You saw the news today? It was me. You read a tiny ad? Me again. I communicate with you. I inform you. I entertain you. I even fool you. I’m everywhere you go, I’m everything you see and hear. And my home is media.

Media is not just your TV screen. It’s not the camera or mic, it’s not the cable or satellite. Media is where I am king. I tell you something and you listen. I show you something and you look.

I depend on context. I depend on inspiration. I depend on you.

But you need me too. If something happens, I’m the one to tell you. If you need information, I’m the one to guide you. I’m the rhythm of you life.

So here’s me, a modern girl, somewhat “geeky” and creative. I have been a technology enthusiast since I was 5, I’m using all sorts of web apps, and along with that have a creative job, combining languages and the web technology. I try to have my creative hobbies too. Like photography, mostly digital.

It all sounds pretty and nice, huh? But guess what: it’s not. I found myself spending loads of time at social media websites browsing through information streams. In the last few weeks, my personal favorite has been Twitter. That’s where I found interesting links and stories.

Twitter had long been just the next new thing my geeky boyfriend was trying out. Until I signed in… Then it became my primary information source. I started following cool web people sharing design and tech-related stories. And all of them were so interesting! And I wanted to bookmark and favorite them all, and share them all… But guess what: while following no more than 75 people, I often found myself scrolling and clicking and browsing through their links for hours… Especially when I didn’t have urgent work to do. It’s so much information that the brain can’t really cope with it, and in the same time it all streams real time, even more, and more, and more…

Last week I spent some time at my mother’s place. She is not the typical mother, you know. Yes, she doesn’t go online too often, and she doesn’t read newspapers. But she does watch TV. In her little kitchen-dining room, the TV is the first thing to switch on and the only thing to look at while having dinner. She checks out the news, but since she knows the viewpoints vary, she follows all the three national TV news reports, as well as one economic channel. This can last up to 2 hours. She sees the same stories two or three times, sometimes even the same report (when it was from a small village with only one reporter available). Then she waits to see what they are broadcasting next. If she doesn’t like it, she’d scroll through all the 50 channels three or four times, and even if she finds nothing interesting, she would just stick with some story. And the hours would go by… Then it’s time for bed, and it’s got too late… Not because of a particularly interesting TV show or interview, but just because of the TV itself, she goes to bed tired and late, having done almost nothing else than staring at the TV screen.

It’s not the information itself that is the biggest problem here. It’s even not the most boring piece of information. It’s what we do with it. In my mother’s case, and in mine: not much. Or to be precise: Nothing. Here, I said it. I find interesting and useful tips every day, and I make nothing out of them. I consume the information only passively, and don’t use it actively.

It’s even worse than receiving no information at all. If you’re not a passive consumer, at some point you’d get creative. Or at least active. You’d not read “Top 10 ways to kill bad habits” and then bookmark it and then forget about it—you’d really try to kill your bad habits. Interesting enough, if we sit and think about our problems, we’d easily come up with some solution. But while we’re just passively reading about people’s best practices, we’d still be stuck with our own problems.

One another problem is: we are served information we don’t really need right now. But it is interesting and might one day be useful and valuable, so we fear we’d miss it. But guess what: the theory saying you could contact any person in the world through 6 or 7 people applies even more to online information streams. Someone wrote an interesting post about a particular problem in typography? Well guess what: until you really need some typography work done and face a problem with it, you don’t really need that article. And when you do face the problem, you’d just type your enquiry in the search field, and you’d probably find the solution at ease.

A problem is solved not through the fact that you’re having a brilliant idea; it’s more productive to have any idea—even not a brilliant one—but to try and incorporate it as soon as possible.

Because productivity comes from action. Being active is more productive than being passive. Not watching TV is more productive than watching too much TV. Not following the information streams is more productive than following them all and end up doing nothing. It’s as simple as that.

No, I don’t mean just artpieces. I mean normal stuff – decoration for a cake, a flower from an old piece of paper, some cables in a funny knot or just a colorful pile of paperclips. Oh, yes, that too! So I bet you created something after all, right? Well, how did it make you feel?

For me, the feeling after creating something, even the smallest thing, is very nice. It’s the kind of feeling that puts a smile on my face and makes me more optimistic. For example, every time I leave a cafeteria or a cafe, I make a smile with the leftover food (if any). Two slices of onion for eyes and some spaghetti for mouth One would ask: why do I do this? Does the waiter even notice that? Well the answer is, that I simply don’t do it for him. I do it for myself. Yes, I don’t do it to make him happy, but myself. Might sound a bit selfish, but it’s not. How can I be sure if he’ll like it? I can’t. But I know that I’ll like it, and I like the feeling after creating this smilie on my plate, so I just do it.

Last year at University, I had a lovely course of lectures in Literary Theory. Basically, my colleagues hated it, because the lector made us think about letuce and pictures of letuce and compare which one is closer to art and why. For me, it was a chance to get familiar with some interesting concepts about art. After centuries of theories, some philosophers had developed an idea. It says: Creating doesn’t have a purpose and shouldn’t be purpose-driven. It is an end in itself: you need to create just for the sake of it; you can’t eat, drink or have sex with art—so you can’t utilize it, and it’s none of our basic needs. And if it were one of our needs, it’d probably never be satisfied.

A few years ago, when I got a camera and started photographing, I would create images of everything that impressed me, and then wanted to share these emotions with others. But actually, what I was doing was capturing and creating primarily for myself. Other people didn’t need me to create, but I did. So I just did it. Most of the images people liked, were created when I was feeling very intense emotions. And ironically, these are mostly melancholic photographs. So I figured out, I was using the process of creating as a therapy. Whenever I was feeling very bad (or very good—both cases it’s “excess, unstable condition”), I was there—out with the camera or alone in front of the computer, doing some post-processing. Creating.

Ever felt hopeless? I definitely have. Many times, actually. The reason: I hadn’t been creating enough. The worst thing one could to to their drive to create is not to create; supress your need to create and that would probably be one of the worst periods in your life.

And don’t get me wrong—even if you’re working with spreadsheets all day long, you could be (and would better be) creative. Why not add some colors or styles to them? Or use a fancy font? It doesn’t need to stand in the final report, but you wouldn’t mind if it looked better while you are working on it, right?

There’s this interesting phenomenon going on: the more people talk, write and show, the more difficult it is to know if they are telling the truth. They have the freedom of speech, but no obligation to tell the truth.

OK, so we all have a freedom of speech. Everyone can share their opinion. And they do it. So what? Do you know the truth about things? I definately don’t. I hear my neighbour saying: “Our street will be repaired next spring. They said so in the news.” Then I read in the news: “The streets in this district are going to be repaired next spring.” Then the owner of the small shop nearby says: “They say they will be repairing the streets here, but the workers say this street will not be repaired.” So do I know the truth? And how will I know it? Well, I can go to the mayor’s office and ask the people in the administration.

Alright, so here’s the problem: why would I need to read the news or to listen to other people? Yes, they are exercising their freedom of speech and everyone says what they want. But they are not informative. When I need this information, I have to ask the authority.

The freedom of speech became a subject of discussion when there was no freedom of speech. It was supposed to bring the truth to the public, because the truth was hidden. There was one source of information, and the authority got to decide what would be reported as truth. Of course, that led to manipulation. So the people decided: when this ends, we’ll no longer have only one source of information. When this ends, we will let everyone speak freely, and by doing so, we’ll finally know the truth about what’s happening.

So, here we are, exercising our freedom of speech. The consequences of it? Well, a freedom of speech, of course! Nothing more. No truth revealed.

Actually, the freedom of speech has led to disinformatiion. Do you know exactly what happens to the world? Who do you trust to tell you? And why do you trust them? How have these sources become more trustworthy? Have you checked if what they are telling is true? Do they have the most readers? And is that a criteria? Maybe they have the most readers for other reasons. And what is more, do you actually trust the judgement of these thousands anonymous readers? Do you think they have checked if the news was true? Do you think that mattered to them?

How can you tell that one source is trustworthy if it’s the only one that says the truth? Don’t people tend to believe the mass? “You’re the only one that says ‘white’, everyone else is saying ‘black’, so why would I trust you?”

Which is more important? How many people are saying something or who these people are? Well, I think it’s more important who they are. There is always at least one person that really knows the truth. This person is trustworthy, therefore authoritative. Sounds familiar? Authority!

So why am I excersising my freedom of speech? Only for the sake of it. If I happen to be a witness to something interesting, I will share it. Because then I would have the authority to do so. It doesn’t really matter if you would believe me or not. After all, we all have the freedom of speech, and no obligation to tell the truth. It is just an option.