The Things We Carry

Laptops are much better suited than smartphones to all but the simplest of tasks, but we’re willing to give up ease-of-use for portability. Smartphones have really, really good cameras these days, but not as good as an actual camera with a lens the size of a rocks glass.

Using a smartphone can be like having a superpower and a disability at the same time. You can access and work with all the knowledge of the world, but only by peeking through a narrow (albeit rather high-resolution) aperture; navigable with only 1 or 2 fingers. And that’s before we consider the quality of any given app.

My pocket tool has a knife (which works great), a pliers (which works pretty well) and screwdriver bits (which work OK, as long as you don’t have to turn them for too long). The idea of having a power circular saw built-in to a pocket multi-tool might sound kind of cool at first, but if my pocket tool had one, there’s a good chance that using it would be either terrifying or incredibly annoying.

The things we carry in our purses or pockets are for convenience (not to be confused with genuine ease), not necessarily for quality.

Turning

Turning things over—in your head or in your hands—can be contemplative. You might be accused of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but I don’t think that’s quite right. It is about expecting something, but expecting something more, not different. It’s about allowing time for things to seep in.

Some things respond easily to that kind of examination, like old furniture or hand tools: weathered and witness to use and carelessness and care. Some new physical things do, too, but many are purposefully designed to be abstract and minimal—merely portals for designed information. There aren’t a lot of obvious features to turn over and examine, because they’re not supposed to be there: they’re supposed to be magic, like a sleek, black, glossy hat.

And yet, when my phone is off (“off-off”: when it is powered down into a sleep mode that means it can’t be roused with a touch or a lift) I can better appreciate its understated aesthetic. (After all, I would never eagerly dismiss or disparage the beauty of a smooth stone.) It bears repeating: it’s not supposed to draw a lot of attention to itself—it should simply be what you need, when you need it. It should provide functions in a way that you naturally reach for them when you want them, but don’t otherwise notice them. And I can still examine the details of its elegant design and the places that dust and lint find its tiny seams and pockets. Tiny imperfections and limitations; an almost microscopic wabi-sabi.

My phone and my coffee cup have more in common than I thought. They are both attractive and well-designed and they both show signs of wear; and my attention is ordinarily drawn more toward what they hold than their affordances.

Taking the Appropriate Steps

Stairs are a tricky business. When you start climbing a set of stairs, it only takes your body 2 or 3 steps to “learn” how far it is from one to the next. The spacing is quickly adapted to, which is why, I suppose, OSHA has a limit of 1/4” of variation in riser height. A small but sudden departure from evenly spaced treads can be a significant hazard and contributor to falls. Anyone who has mistakenly believed that there was one more or one less step has had a kind of near-death experience related to this phenomenon.

Obviously, it isn’t that we need perfectly flat ground or perfectly even stairs to survive in the natural world. We got along fine with the natural terrain of rocks and riverbanks and slopes for a long time before stairs or escalators were developed; we simply had to pay attention and exert ourselves. It’s that a regular pattern is easy to identify and our body quickly figures out how to put itself on auto-pilot for efficiency: there’s no benefit to investing extra effort where it isn’t obviously needed.

We fall when we mistakenly perceive the steps to be even and they are instead off by more than 1/4” or so. For our safety, the distinction must be as sharp and obvious as going from one stair tread to the next: the path must either be noticeably irregular and unpredictable or utterly monotonous. But for our humanity—our animal agency—we need uneven terrain to engage our senses and challenge our balance.

P.S. Cats instinctively know that we are most vulnerable when we are carrying a basket full of laundry on the stairs and frequently make attempts to assassinate us there by suddenly appearing underfoot.

On Sticks, Stones and Words

They’re all good tools, and well-suited to us.

Large sticks make excellent handles for pushing, pulling and leveraging. Small sticks can be used for poking and scraping.

Large stones are great for smashing and grinding. Small stones—especially when they’re small enough to be held in a three-jaw chuck grip (between your thumb, index and middle finger)—are excellent for precision drawing and carving.

Words don’t necessarily work better when they’re large or small. They can be precise or general no matter their length. They are fantastic for teaching, storytelling, singing, coordinating, asking for help and saying, “Thank you”.