Technology vs. Walking

For a long stretch of human existence, if you went for a walk it was “out of doors”. There just weren’t that many buildings big enough that you could even quicken your step into a run, much less spend time strolling in the same structure. There were castles and cathedrals: exceptions that prove the rule.

Over time, there were bigger and bigger buildings: factories, warehouses, theaters and airship hangars. And eventually department stores. The first indoor mall, Southdale Center Mall, was built in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota: an entire miniature downtown shopping area in a completely enclosed building: no bugs, no wind or rain or dark of night. Certainly no terrain.

To take this one step further, consider the absurdity of the treadmill: a device placed inside a building which helps you simulate the act of walking or running while remaining in place! Biologically, this creates a visuomotor paradox that approaches the grotesque: we’re used to the visual feedback and kinesthetic sensations that come with moving. A treadmill is essentially playing a biomechanical prank on our senses.

Humans are naturally quite well-equipped to walking outdoors, and have gone from having to traverse the landscape as we found it, punctuated with trees, streams, thickets and rocks, to walking along muddy streets and wooden sidewalks, to perfectly smooth, flat concrete and carpet nearly everywhere in a very short period of time, evolutionarily speaking. I think it would seem very odd to someone from the Victorian era that we have so many large buildings that we spend time in, but perhaps they would have thought it sounded very civilized.

Walking indoors is certainly better than not walking at all, but it’s a very recent development and it comes at a cost: it offers predictable comfort at the expense of feeling the wind on your face, seeing the sun and the clouds, feeling warm or chilled, or the chance of seeing wildlife. But mostly it diminishes a certain feeling of agency; of moving through a world that is, in fact, accommodating without being entirely convenient.