Olu Online

waste

last updated 16 hours, 26 minutes ago

there's been a theme in a lot of my posts in this series, this challenge. i'm supposed to be writing about the ways that technology can help life flourish, or at least get out of the way of progress. but a lot of the time i've been talking about the ways in which we've missed the mark, or created a mess of things.

cue "i saw the greatest minds destroyed by the doomscroll, web3 ai big data keyword/ dragging themselves to their desks at dawn for a hype-based bubble" take. coming up with generative productive ways to combat the collective technological brain drain is the work of a bunch of people, and i am the first to admit i don't really know the direction, that i can't chart a way to a new reality on my own.

it's still a waste! i initially wrote that i don't know why i spend so much of my day pondering this stuff. i could be building stuff, reading, hanging out with loved ones, making art or asleep. many such options exist. but i'm drawn back to these questions, and i'm glad the challenge is ending as i finally think i get that you don't have to wait for the conditions to be perfect, for the road ahead to be clear, for the one true path to emerge from the mist for anything.

i've been wasting time as the ocean boils! i don't think time wasting is necessarily bad but i do have a tendency to equate time to productivity or fun. to assume the time waiting for the pot to boil should have been spent well or not all, no matter what. but watched pots, ignored pots and pots you multitasked whilst they were boiling all boil just as well.

i feel ready to do things, and am annoyed i've been tacitly waiting. i still have a few more letters to do in this, and will complete them, and it's not as if i'm going to stop writing. it'll just not be an alternative to getting out and doing a thing i guess? i wasn't doing this consciously, but i think it's a pattern in a lot of people; forgetting you can take action without certainty.

i started reading reassembling rubbish: worlding electronic waste by josh lepawsky and am really enjoying it, i really wanted to postpone writing until i was further in, but seize the day and all that right?

when i wrote every drop i was really hoping someone would have written something about every aspect of waste and material use that goes into creating modern devices. i pitched something in this vein to something in the intersection of art and technology and got a pass, but maybe i'll revisit the idea. there's something confronting in waste, and not just the consumer side, but the huge amounts that's destroyed and transformed in the making.

what do you waste? do you want to waste less? more? let me know.

this piece is part of my attempt at alphabet superset, a “6-month” creative challenge (i passed a year in september 2024 — with a long break! — and the creator of the challenge finished on 11th August 2025). other posts so far: abolition, bump, boost, culture, discussion, english, formulaic, gone, home, immortality, jargon, knowledge, leaving, monotony, no, permanent, questions, relationships, sensual, technopaganism, upload and video.

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