ALHAMBRA

I stand frozen on a Soho street corner transfixed by a terrible quandary.  Tourists and trendies flow around me regardless, as my mind goes back to Granada in Spain twelve months earlier.

We were taking a tour of the Alhambra palace and fortress.  All around us hoards of social media junkies slavishly digitised every inch of the decor to re-create it on Facebook for the benefit of friends and family back home. And I was transfixed by the almost tangible torrent of data rising into the cloud from that parched hill. So many images of the same thing taken from the same angle, the only difference being the visage that places itself in the foreground and smiles triumphantly as if to say: This is it. I’ve done it. Finally I’m here.

But they’re not really. They say that if you want to get a good view of a Formula 1 race you should watch it on the telly. Being there is second rate, rationed as you are to a fleeting glimpse of action as it passes you by. And it’s the same here. The people getting a really good look at this place are thousands of miles away, on a train on the way into work. Because they have the time to take it in and marvel at the Moorish detail and imagine how wonderful it must be to actually be there. The people who are are there far too busy broadcasting it to everyone else to pay any attention. But that’s okay, because they can look at it on their phone back in the hotel.

So I wandered round in a state of mild anxiety, worrying about how much space there is in 'the cloud', and whether we should really be rationing it. Can it really be infinite? At some point, is some guy in a server farm in the desert going to turn round and say - “Okay, that’s enough. You can put more pictures up there, but only if you take some off first”?

And I have to admit to feeling a little smug for not uploading anything myself, although truth be told I was worrying far too much about the impending capacity crisis to take in very much.

Back with my dilemma in Soho one year later.  As usual I’ve activated Map My Fitness to record the route and distance of my walk. But I need to look at a previous recording to locate a restaurant I’m keen to visit. And to do that I have to stop the recording of the walk I’m part way through. And I can’t restart it. And I really don’t want to miss my weekly workout in the capital.  
But then it begins to dawns on me. I could actually still do the walk without recording it. It would still happen. My feet would still endure 10km of hard pavements. My heart would still be required to beat that bit quicker for the two-odd hours it takes. But if I’m not adding it to my fine collection of 'workouts' - those squiggly red lines worming through the digitised street view - is it really worth it?

Later in the restaurant I amuse myself by flicking through the Alhambra photos on my phone. It’s hard to believe I was actually there.


@jesoverthinksit