The Beauty of a Finite Existence – and Technology

There was an excellent piece in the New York Times this weekend by the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) called “How Not to Be Alone.” In it, Foer talks about how our technologies make us alone – and what we lose from that:

Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they will live forever. It’s possible that many reading these words will never die. Let’s assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers.

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or — being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology” — but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.

You can read the whole thing here.