Magical Information

How important is information to people today? How valuable? When I used the internet every day, my brain was like an intelligent sponge. It was always figuring out what it absorbed. It gave me a sense of power to know that the answers to anything rested at my fingertips. After almost a month offline, I think that power is getting channeled into something else.

I wonder what someone sees when they encounter blind people on the internet. I wonder what they believe we do. Likely, the blind users are on a blind-specific website, like Zone BBS. But naturally, just as the world has opened for the sighted, it has opened up to us. Since the internet is much more accessible than some other sources of information, people shouldn’t be surprised that their disabled neighbors know where to find random things on the World Wide Web.

I was a desk warrior. My fingers pounded out search strings in Google or DuckDuckGo. I spent hours looking things up and cross-referencing, so I learned how to look up specific queries from sheer practice. But the truth is that most blind or disabled people are sheltered in some way. They need a constantly changing outlet to keep their minds sharp. And the internet gives them exactly that. It provides opportunities for everything from reading to playing games and working. It’s no wonder almost every disabled person is an expert at navigating the internet compared to a non-disabled person. They don’t have a choice. Few other things are accessible to us, it’s a classic case of “desired difficulty” learning. Basically, as I see it, disabled people must understand the internet to get by in this world. I used to cling to it, always looking things up and making new discoveries.

Now, though, something is slowly shifting inside me as I complete this challenge. I care less about learning the facts surrounding mundane things.

A gaggle of friends and I are stretched out on the floor of my friend Amber’s bedroom. We’re all wondering what we should change our gaming profile handles to or whether we should even change them at all. Somehow, the topic swerves to the Harry Potter books.

“I can’t believe the first book was published way back in 1990,” Amber muses. Her bright pink hair flutter from a breeze that drift in through the open window.

“What?” Jamaal interjects. “Naw! It wasn’t.”

“Listen to me.” Amber chides him. “It did come out in 1990.”

I know what’s going to happen before they start whipping their phones out as if they’re pistols in the Old West. I stand up and back out of the room as iPhone screens light up the dimness. Both friends have very modest data plans, so it will take a while before their phones connect with their respective 4G networks. I hurry out of the house and down to a fast-food joint across the street. I sit there for a while before I spot a guy in a T-shirt with the Harry Potter logo. I get his attention, eager to ask him a question. It will be fun to go back to my friends with his answer.

“Hiya,” I say, grinning. “Nice shirt!” I gesture with my cane to the jet-black tee.

The guy looks down at my cane and then back at me. Slowly, he responds. “Yeah. I got it on sale.”

“That’s wicked. Where’d you get it?”

“Some thrift shop. Dudes in there always sell stuff cheap.”

“So, is it near here?” I venture. Man, am I one heck of a conversationalist.

“Dunno,” he replies.

“I actually have a Harry Potter question if you don’t mind,” I warble like a complete weirdo. “Well, you see, a group of friends and I were wondering when the first book came out. I thought you’d know because you have a Harry Potter shirt. Besides, I’m just too friendly for my own good!”

A huge grin splits his face.

Then, a taller teen, apparently his brother, approaches us. He looks down at me before snapping, “Mom’s here. Let’s go. Now.”

“But I just got here,” his brother protests.

The taller boy scrutinizes me carefully as if I’m going to steal something out of his brother’s pocket.

“Hi!” I proclaim. “I was just asking him a Harry Potter question.”

“Fucking nerds,” the taller brother mutters.

I pretended I didn’t hear. “I was just wondering what year the first book was published.”

The taller brother spins back to me. He shouts at me as if I’ve asked whether we are, indeed, in Chicago. “Jesus Christ, man! Fucking Google it, dude.”

I nod and wave as they leave. Now that the moment has passed, I wish I had asked what his favorite character was or even if he liked Harry Potter, not just about a publication date.

Back at my friend’s house, the gang is still looking up the answer. Someone found a blog that revealed a “secret,” and all bets are off. I look around the house for the first Harry Potter book just so I can stop their arguing.

A month ago, I would have still been on that floor, interjecting with what I found online. My laptop would have been open, and I would have been on Google or another search engine. Now, I realize it doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things. What will come out of all this passionate energy?

I can’t find the first book, so I start playing some PS4 games in the living room. Soon, I forget about the whole discussion.

I notice that I have a larger attention span for conversations now. My need to know every detail of the universe has diminished somewhat, which I believe is a good thing. Before, when I’d be talking with someone, I’d have one ear on what they were saying, and the other would be listening to my phone for new emails. Now, I simply enjoy things more. I enjoy being with people more than emails. I relish understanding that I don’t have to know everything or even look anything up. I can just sit and listen as people relay their stories, wishes, and dreams to me. It’s refreshing to find myself locked in conversations like a vice, unconcerned about when the next email will slide into my inbox.

Still, there’s one area in which you can’t disconnect when you’re blind. When I’m with other blind people, I hear phones all the time. I’m disconnected, but other people aren’t, and our phones speak to us with each notification and update. When I’m talking to someone, there are always the sounds of new emails, and the person always looks down at their phone. Often, the emails, website updates, or other notifications are read aloud. I know others can’t help exposing me to this noise because I’ve done the same thing to many people —- even people I’ve just met.

It stems from the need to keep busy. I think some older people don’t understand why we young folks can’t hold conversations anymore. It’s not that we don’t know how; it’s that we’re trained from an early age to do many things at once. We’ve learned to allow interruptions, rather than asking others to wait for their turns. One thing can’t hold our attention for a long time because the internet doesn’t work that way. We’ve grown up trained by the internet. It teaches us that our brains must be split. Since we’re online for so long, even the idea of playing a game without talking to someone about something unrelated is uncomfortable. “You mean I have to do this one thing?”

The internet has also taught us that we need to be powerful. Knowledge is certainly power, but people my age now crave the internet. It’s encouraged us to look things up but not to retain what we’ve just learned because the information will be there later. Why should we remember phone numbers, for example? Every phone today has an address book. In a few years, why will we need to know how to get anywhere? Google cars will drive us. Older people perceive this tendency negatively. They don’t understand the kind of training we’ve had to endure since schools and nearly everything else has internet access in some capacity.

Along with my changed attention span, I’m adapting differently to communication in general. Phone conversations are longer, and so is everything else I do in person. I feel like I have all the time in the world to do things. If I just work slowly and steadily, eventually, things will get done. I’m more focused as well. I’m reading more. Everything I do involves a depth of concentration that I’d never have been able to muster a month ago.

Before this month, information was something that I needed. Now, I put conversations first. When I talk to my friends, they ask me questions that require informative, short answers, rather than long stories. These questions often require a definitive answer from me, as if I’m Cortana or Siri. When I’m around my internet-connected friends, I feel like I’m search engine, not a human being.

It’s different when I talk with Travis. Since we haven’t learned about each other online, we have the kind of conversations I want to have. I want to listen to his stories, like the time his cat leaped on the table and knocked over a glass of wine before falling off, the time his sister drew a heart with his brailler and gave it to him or Valentine’s Day, or the time when his cane got stuck in a crack and he needed three people to extract it. I’m at home when I listen to Travis’s stories, and he loves hearing mine.

I can’t just say to Travis, “Read this,” and then send a URL over the phone so that he can learn about me. I’ve noticed I did that a lot when someone asked me about myself. I think people identify with their online profiles, as if the internet defines them. What they’ve written on Facebook is enough; they don’t have anything more to say. But Travis and I can always tell each other more. Talking with him and with some of the older people here in my apartment complex allows me to learn more about them than I ever could from Twitter or Facebook. In conversation, there’s always something new to learn —- something unexpected.

The best part of talking with Amber and the gang is that the first Harry Potter book’s publication date isn’t even on my mind.