Artificial Attentiveness

Some tools (or toys?) for perceiving beyond the senses. Plus The Heard.

Hello from New Orleans, where TAoN HQ came through Francine just fine — just lost power for a bit less than a day. We were fortunate.

As it always does, the process of waiting for the storm to hit made me think about how we attend to the world with tools beyond our individual senses. That is: with technology.

A couple of times a week, I look at the Mississippi River; nearby levees are part of my regular bike rides. So I always have a sense of whether the water higher or lower than before, how much batture there is to see, and so on. Obviously I put a lot of emphasis, in this newsletter and in my life, on that kind of perception and attentiveness: the human kind, grounded in physical presence, connected to the world as it is.

Even so … about once a week I also check this website, which tracks, and forecasts, the river level at New Orleans (which of course is affected not just by local weather, but by events and conditions upriver). I don’t particularly need to do this. I just find a certain dorky delight in monitoring such things.

So yes, I regularly encourage you (and myself) not to get distracted by screens, to be suspicious of algorithmic bids for attention, to remember the artificial part of artificial intelligence. But sometimes what’s on our screens can extend perception; even artificial intelligence can be worthwhile, in perspective.

In that sprit I’ll briefly share some more examples — some hurricane-related, some not — and you can decide for yourself whether they’re fun and/or useful perception tools, or just dorky toy-like distractions. (Or, of course, both.) Or tell me your own favorites.

• Along with the river level, I like to look at this map of power outages by state, this site that tracks flight cancellations, and this one focused on bird migration. Every once in a while, I check this cool global map of electrical storms — it even has sound! What’s the point? I’m not sure!

• I also have a few perception-tool apps on my phone, the most recent addition being My Altitude, which reports your altititude. (It’s not super precise so I’m looking for an alternative if you have suggestions.) I love Decibel X, a decibel meter; E practically rolled her eyes when I showed this to her at a restaurant, but I think it’s awesome! Why? Beats me!