Tactile.

My wife, Laura, and I just returned from five days at the most extraordinary and expensive place I've ever stayed, Castle Hot Springs in the Bradshaw Mountains about two hours north of Phoenix.

Like Rick Blaine in "Casablanca," I came for the waters--five hot springs that lowered in temperature as you descended the mountain to the spring-fed swimming pool. The uppermost was 106-degrees and the pool was about 85-degrees.

I'd say 40-percent of the guests came for the springs. Another 20-percent came to hike. And the remaining 40-percent came for the food.

The food.

The food was the best I have ever eaten in my life by far.

Hold on, I'm rounding into a point here.

While I was on vacation, I became detached from my electronic devices. The resort itself, by design, had only spotty cell coverage and you could really only get wireless in either the lobby or your room. In fact, the resort's wifi password was DoYouReallyWant2?

Just now I read a Wall Street Journal review of "The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World" by Christine Rosen. Here's the sentence that started me thinking: "new things drive out old things, sometimes so quickly that no one pauses to ask whether it was a good trade." Rosen, the review tells us, "implores readers to 'consider what we are losing, as well as gaining, when we allow new technologies into our lives.'"

And maybe this is the key part. Some things we, as creative human beings, need to spend time thinking about, not googling about:

Daydreaming, of course, can’t happen if a person picks up her smartphone for a micro-burst of entertainment the moment she has to wait in line at the supermarket; nor, buried in her screen, will she shoot the breeze with other customers or the cashier. Evidence marshaled by Ms. Rosen suggests that a person who doesn’t daydream is a person less inclined to introspection and invention.

When a person trades momentary boredom for a shot of screen-based dopamine, she gets the pleasure of escape but misses out on being awake and present in the moment and perhaps forgoes an insight or a recollection that would have added something to her life. A person who avoids interacting with others fends off potentially awkward exchanges but may also gradually lose the skills to recognize social cues. There is an opportunity cost to picking up your phone.

As a creative who 99.7-percent of the time presents to clients on Zoom, this passage stung:

"Being human has traditionally involved being a kinetic, tactile mortal who has evolved to read the faces and gestures of other mortals and to perform complex physical actions." 

Reading faces always served as a guide when presenting. It always gave me information. I think it made my work better. Likewise, visiting a client's office, seeing their factory always did the same. In person you learn things you don't learn via screens and garbled phone calls.

I think it's premature to say reading faces is gone. Or that we haven't found ways to overcome the lack of human contact that afflicts so much of our lives. But I think we need to think about the digital immateriality of so much of our living.

One more thing, at dinner each night at Castle Hot Springs, the maitre d' would hand us our menus and say something like, "Your menus for our five-course dining experience..."

 
As much as I value human connection, that phrase made me want to slug him.