Reader,
This is an odd service. So let me start you off with some odd observations, which, if you are like me, you may not find quite so odd.
First: the shape of our thought, knowingly or unknowingly, is deeply shaped by our immersion in the echoes and din of the modern moment. Second: the attention-grabbing tactics of the internet and the public forum are not only noise but also actively corrosive to the life well-lived. Third: action and theory are inseparable: without first changing the way one lives you cannot imagine true alternatives to the values of modernity.
With these thoughts percolating through your mind, you may have found yourself seeking a way out of the noise of modernity—perhaps preserving the voices that sing truly and cutting out the tone-deaf. You may have left social media platforms and only read blogs. But, over time, the noise crept back in. That one blogging platform became twitter again. The harmony faded.
It's easy to assume that changing your media diet entails only changing the content that one consumes, but it should also entail changing the medium by which one communes (recall Marshall McLuhan). "Perhaps," you may have concluded, "the internet's lack of friction does not allow for leisurely engagement."
This situation is exactly what Hard Copy is trying to address. Bound by the strictures of the physical world (limited, private, and nothing if not intuitive to embodied existence), your online reading (which may have just been browsing) might become what it always should have been: simply: reading. If you are a writer aspiring to music, and not just noise, or a reader that knows there are other sane souls, this might be one of the critical steps you take.
Thank you,
