technology

I did a radio programme about a year ago, a lot of people got together, with Iolo Williams, and microphones all around and we’d go out for walks. We made the point there that this is it. This is the only place we have. There’s no alternative at this. If we mess it up so much, this planet, we can’t go anywhere. You see all these science fiction things, with artificial landscapes, and you almost think that’s the countryside would be like, perhaps that’s what we are going to be doing. It’s horrifying.

People spend a lot more time just looking at their phone screens. They spend a lot of time with screens. My work is all about getting off the screen. All about social interactions. So you can see how this virus situation is very challenging about my art work. But luckily I’ve got a postcard project. It’s interesting to run a project through the post.

This is what frightens me with the next generation. When we – my generation – were in primary school in Llanrug, and it was a lovely Friday afternoon, the teacher would say, oh let’s go out for a walk. We’ll go out for a walk and we’ll go about a mile down the road towards the church outside the village. And we’d take little notebooks with us and note what the birds were, what the butterflies were. And he’d teach us what they were called and all this sort of thing. So we were a generation that looked outwards. But unfortunately technology has had a huge impact on this, from looking outwards, now they only look inwards. They don’t look beyond their ear things in their ears and their phones in front of them. And its almost like is there going to be a generation that grows up thinking the countryside is something virtual reality. Where you can press a button and trees will grow as if by magic, and press another and you can get rid of 100 trees.

But I do think that technology does have a role to play in showing people how much nicer it could be.

It’s much more a community thing. And it’s a bit like my son was talking about bit chain - block chain programming. It strikes me that that kind of technology gives you the possibility that everyone has a contribution to make, everyone has something valuable to share. But the way the economic system is set up, there is no way of them doing that. But with block chain, your story about the mountain, apart from all the other ways of contributing you could be rewarded for sharing that. Direct, incontrovertible, you cannot change the transaction. You’d get x% of a bit coin for making a cup of tea and sharing a story with someone on the way up the mountain. And to me that’s genuinely community – its sharing out. That’s how a place like N Wales could genuinely benefit from tourism. If what he [my son] says is true, and I’m just starting to understand it, the impact towards sustainability is immense. It is like the tool that could unlock what we’ve all been dreaming of for this century.