An all-around beautiful piece of writing that resonated deeply. If I could, I'd just copy & paste it all, because it's so wonderful. But, here are a few:
Novelty and the promise of interconnectedness by gathering in a common town square to blast out whatever was going on in our lives eventually won out.
Things started to change and instead of going home, you, and everybody else started to live in the town square. Suddenly you had to compete with them for space, time, attention, and engagement.
There is a shape to your physical home. Arranged and organized in the ways that make sense for you, the reward is a space that works for you. That you can keep adding to or subtracting from, rearranging or re-doing when things no longer work or your energy or lifestyle seeks a new configuration that best suits you where you are.
I have very little at the town square, because it’s not a public one. It’s a walled-off town square, whose rules and borders change at the whims of those who created it. The secret is that it’s not even that: it’s actually a panopticon.