It happened sometime around 2010:

A singular moment in human history . . .

. . . it was the moment we stopped getting angry at people gaping at their devices, bumping into us on the sidewalk . . . the moment when, with a sigh, your professor finally gave up on that student who, to be fair, was, like, always checking her phone . . .

I myself remember marking it . . . it was as though a sea change had stolen upon me . . . a young man came in for a job interview; halfway through, his pocket bleeped . . . and he pulled out his phone and checked it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It was the moment when family meals grew more distracted . . . sitting with friends more remote . . . when your first act on waking was to check your social . . . when on Saturday nights it was easier to blow off the bar, teeming and awkward, for the cool thrill of the left-swipe, right-swipe, glimmer of chance encounter.

You remember it, don’t you . . . when you too started walking with your head down . . . the first buds of Spring pushing forth, unnoticed . . . the eagle wheeling above you in the high sky, unseen . . . a text suddenly as good as the touch of a hand . . . a selfie as warm as a hug . . . no big deal, right? . . . a mere tweak, a toneshift, a new ambience to inhabit, buzzing and flashing and futuristic . . . quite exciting, really . . . and yet, and yet . . . that moment you lived through ten years ago was one of the most significant in human history . . . indeed, it was humanity’s second great migration — the moment we departed the physical world for a virtual one.

Humanity’s first great migration, eons ago, was our primordial passage from the sea to the land. A preposterous success, it set us on a billion-year evolutionary adventure . . . delivering us to this current day and its attendant wonders . . . behold, in mere hours, global commerce delivered to your couch . . . at the push of a button your every acquaintance . . . in your pocket all recorded knowledge of the world.

But, but . . . a shake of the head . . . a gnawing suspicion . . . something feels off . . . screens everywhere, eyes glazed over, this simulacrum of our own devising, the enormity of constant connection . . .

it is can we admit it? boring . . .

What if we want out? want back?. . . back to the birds, the beasts, the fish . . . back to the rivers and wild spaces, to the scent of ozone after rain . . . back to immanence, to roughness . . . back to physical.

Might we then get a shock? . . .

find that the world we abandoned years ago has vanished . . . that somewhere along the line it went POOF . . .

find that our billion-year experiment here on earth is laid bare: an evolutionary dead end.