The sad reality of the world, animated by Steve Cutts
Steve Cutts draws what we have all half-noticed and mostly agreed not to mention: the crowd at the concert filming the concert, the family at dinner each somewhere else, the walk through a beautiful place taken entirely through a four-inch rectangle.
It lands because there is no lecture in it. Nobody is called stupid or weak. It simply holds up a mirror at the right angle and lets you recognise yourself in the background of a frame or two, which is a far harder thing to shrug off than an argument.
Watch it once through. Then, if you can bear it, watch the last thirty seconds again and ask what your own version of that scene looks like — because everyone has one, and knowing yours is where this work actually starts.
First published 18 February 2018
Michael has spent much of his working life online—and much of the rest of it trying to stop that technology taking over. He has thrown a phone into a lake, locked devices in boxes and experimented with long periods offline. He writes about what helped, what failed and how to keep the useful parts of digital life.