It’s good to be free.
It’s Friday. Raining outside, I’ve just finished work for the week and am heading to Rhondda’s to make a curry for when she gets home. Rucksack on my back, headphones in. Pull the door shut with a flick of the finger. Press play on my new old iPod.
The little things they make me so happy
All I wanna do is live by the sea
Yeah, little things they make me so happy
But it’s good, yes it’s good, it’s good to be free
It’s Tuesday. Perhaps the last day of summer on the last day of September. We’re sitting on the lawn of a nice hotel, having a drink, taking in the sun, looking at the sea. Watching people and birds.
A young seagull is working hard to get the leftovers out of a Denby bowl while a wise crow watches. Another pokes his beak into the lawn here and there, strutting around as two women struggle across the terrace with oversized suitcases and bags.
The couple next to us can’t stop looking at their phones despite the view.
As I stare at the patinated stone roof, I start to think how simple it must be to be a bird — and wonder how we’ve managed to tie ourselves up in knots with bags on wheels, money, and kinda pointless technology.
I start to contemplate 1995, when I probably sat on the same lawn with the same beer, driven here in a car that fundamentally works the same, and walked on the same beach. I might have stood to live three years less, but life was cheaper, simpler, and no less fulfilling.
I’m not feeling nostalgic for the ’90s, or any time for that matter. I just start to wonder what all this progress is doing to us. Who asked for it, and what was wrong with a landline, a bank branch, and the video library?
You could say the explosion of information has made us better educated, more informed. Perhaps the mainstream media has less control. Maybe. But now there are so many voices, so many channels, so much choice — it’s all just too much: endless videos, pictures, and broadcasts. It’s impossible to keep up.
So many conflicting stories about the same thing. So many truths. I suspect the purposeful dissemination of noise is part of the plan — a way to dilute freedom by flooding it.
The invention of the printing press in the 15th century created a similar problem. The Church and universities had acted as gatekeepers of knowledge. Radicals, reformers, and astrologers could suddenly spread their ideas. Too much to ban, so disinformation and licensing laws began — the equivalent of today’s digital noise and legislation.
That’s a fair bit to contemplate while sitting on a hotel lawn, so I decide to let my mind rest and watch some YouTube. This week it’s all golf, old cars, and DIY campervans. The algorithm aligns with my thoughts. Last week it was all civil war and economic collapse.
We are permanently tethered to this network — this beast that tracks everything we do. Every heartbeat, every word. Literally everything. The iPod is a small escape.
It’s good to be free.
The algorithm, like government and the old elites, isn’t really listening. It doesn’t care what we think — it just wants us to react. It drives the conversation, feeds the outrage, and rewards the noise. Even the independent creators who think they’re fighting the system are really part of it. The network sets the agenda, and we just keep feeding it. We’ve become its slaves.
I start to contemplate 1995 again. Really, I start to imagine what it would be like to quietly step aside — to let the internet hum in the background, feeding on itself while we disappear from view. Maybe we don’t need to fight it, just outsmart it. Fool it with a bit of clever code, make it think we’re still here while we quietly go back to listening to CDs, watching DVDs, living offline. I even start looking up how to set up an analogue TV station. Could I broadcast a pirate signal the algorithm would never notice?
I imagine a quiet exodus. A community that simply slips away. Goes underground, perhaps literally. Perhaps behind walls. Trading in its own currency, bound by its own rhythm. Slowly, this hidden world grows, until one day the politicians and the algorithm look up and realise: Everyone’s gone.
Is there anybody out there?
Is there anybody out there?
Ah, is there anybody out there?
All the best
This Week’s Links:
It’s good to be free – Oasis – 1995 🙂
Is there anybody out there? – Pink Floyd
The dead internet theory.
How to create storage in a house where there is none.
The former US Embassy in Mayfair is now a hotel.
Main Image credit: The algorithm doesn’t know this moment exists. (MidJourney)
