Technological encounters
During Wednesday’s panel, somebody asked me if I thought it was a good thing that more and more human relationships are going through machines. That’s a big question, and the solution will probably be in balance between real life and computerized interactions.
I think that:
• we went from having a few close friends to having a lot of distant friends (and still a few close friendships we build during our childhood, we are not born with iChat accounts after all).
• technology can not reproduce the richness of human contact, and can even be dangerous (remember: people correctly understand the mood of an email only 50% of the time!)
• face to face is still the best way to know someone, and despite the fact video conferencing has been here for a while now we continue traveling around the world.
• technology is expanding our social possibilities. Beyond the most well known tools (blogs, mySpace, IM, email), I’m very interested in more borderline and innovative possibilities like:
It’s like putting a dating status RSS feed on your mySpace contacts. Every time somebody becomes single you will get an alert and “catch them at the rebound”. This creates an intriguing concept: lovers waiting list, where in theory someone could see who is monitoring her/his dating status, i.e. waiting for the person to be free.
» UrbanSeeder
This service creates “repeated co-attendance to events that may gradually draw you together”. Another new way of connecting. It’s a bit late for me to experiment it but I find this very poetic somehow.
» Jabberwocky
This application works around the Familiar Strangers concept, and turns your phone into a “mobile device to explore and play with our subtle, yet important, connections to the Familiar Strangers whom we regularly encounter”.
» BuddyBeads
These are “techno-jewelry items that facilitate non-verbal and emotional communication among group members, through codes and signals which the group decided upon together”.
Communications are being reshaped. We will have to learn how to benefit from these technologies – and from the new possibilities they offer – without losing our humanity.
