a diet of sorts. but with whose body? and to whose health? (1)

I sit in the midst of any number of familiar environments as I start this post.

Where to start? How about the one that begins with my ass planted on this hard wooden bench: at Caffe Strada on a warm fogless Sunday morning in Berkeley, shortly after walking up from the packed England-Germany World Cup soccer match at Henry's, a sea of jerseys and cheers...The sun shines down on the tables, filtered through the trees over the patio, with people here and there in pairs talking, reading the paper or a magazine, and a few like me, looking busy and involved in their screens. I think of (usually cooler and greyer) mornings of cappuccinos and morning buns with Charles here, of the sea of students that usually populate and circulate throughout the place, of the vibrancy of this cafe on the corner of the street, on the edge of campus, sitting on the verge of the Berkeley hills.

But the material environment of human bodies, panting dogs, concrete patios and leafy trees is only one of the worlds I can see and feel opening up in front of me. On the table, along with the computer, red folder, water glass, and uneaten banana sits my cellphone, a new vessel for an older set of functions, bringing familiar people, friends and family, into my pocket, hand, ear and mind through voice calls and text messages. The weight of the phone in my pocket, and the ambient sense of connectivity it brings when sitting on the table, bring to mind scenes and passages from The Lord of the Rings. The phone-ring is a node of power, mediating our connection to the world, transporting us to other places and bringing others here. And it is simultaneously a lead weight, sucking our minds into its web, pulling our hands toward it, feeling comfortable in our fingers--its soothing buttons, its smooth curves, the calming expanse of its glassy screen... my precious, our preciousssssss....

If the phone, powered on, reaches around me, enfolds me within its virtual reach, then what of the domains that open up when I lift the lid of this computer? "The computer", and "the Internet" even, have long ceased to be thought of in the singular. Icons for no fewer than 28 separate applications line the bottom of the screen, and any number of applications are available at the click of a button. I've got only five tabs open now in this Firefox browser, while the dropbox icon at top lures me to my files online, the wireless signal monitor reassures me that I'm online, the U.S. flag tells me I'm typing in U.S. English, and, oh yes, icons for a dozen documents and folders lie arranged across the top of my desk, which just happens to be a window to a sweeping vista of tree-lined fields leading to dark hills, themselves dwarfed by a range of craggy white mountains in the distance.

Here I sit, I remind myself. Here I sit.