Now who's holding the mirror?

The NYT ran a story yesterday about a new social media platform called Foursquare. Jenna Wortham reports:

A combination of friend-finder, city guide and competitive bar game, Foursquare lets users “check in” with a cellphone at a bar, restaurant or art gallery. That alerts their friends to their current location so they can drop by and say hello.

Read the rest here.

As soon as I got to the last sentence I did two things: I immediately joined.

And then thought about joining.

Foursquare, it occurred to me as I looked at the site, is like Meetup but less lame, like Latitude but less stalkerish, like Yelp but (hopefully -- too soon to tell) less gushy. You're somewhere fun, you "shout" your whereabouts, and people in your network, aka your friends, can show up. Plus there's a whole "game" component -- you compete with other members and gain status by going to places frequently. Sounds like silly, harmless fun.

But there's something about the idea that's monumental.

Let's take a step back and think about a question we lit nerds like to ponder. "What's the relationship between art and life?" Erich Auerbach wrote some essays on the subject of imitation (named, mimetically, Mimesis) that pretty much helped found the field of comparative literature. Long before him, humans have been wondering: does art hold up the mirror to nature, or vice versa? Why do we keep taking matter and shaping it into statues or smearing it onto canvases to make things that look like us? Even if we didn't want to "represent" through art, could we? And what does it take for a work of art or an aesthetic movement to inspire, influence or even alter society?

Well, today we can reframe that "art/life" question in terms of technology, social media, user interfacing, user experience. Like art, those innovations are man made and they're mostly focused on recreating experiences or concepts from real life. We have web "pages" and virtual "friends." One heavy hitter of the virtual world named itself something that constantly reminds us what it's trying to emulate: Second Life. But the name also means that the site recognizes it's going to play second fiddle to your real, "first" life. (Or, at least, it should, is the implication. Because if your second life is your first one, then you have a problem. Which you could blog about. Endlessly. Like someone I know. Who I occasionally refer to in the third person. For reasons neither of us can really comprehend.)

Beyond technology that imitates life, there's the more ambiguous category of sites, interfaces and apps that sort of imitate life, but sort of don't. You have Lifehacker, which is supposed to make your life better -- but which "life," the digital or the real one? And sites like Facebook, which was originally built on social networks that already existed, but has ended up rewiring relationships. Now people's divorces, job searches and childbirths are complicated, tainted or enlivened by their walls and postings, for example. Yet note the lingo -- these terms are still words we use to describe the spaces around us: walls, tags, posts. Facebook may be "poking" life, but life pokes back harder.

Most revolutionary is when life directly imitates art, technology, artifice. This is evident when I find myself saying "delete" instead of erase and "scroll" instead of move, or when I think in terms of pixels and wish I could link from a notepad to an article online. (I'm sure someone has a word for this. Digital creep? Hmm.) If If Web 2.0 was the internet imitating life (interactivity, conversations, virtual everything), then the next evolution will be life imitating the web. But should we call that Web 3.0, or Life 2.0?

Obviously technology is shaping the world outside the screen -- that's no revelation. But there's aggregate influence (over time, lots of things combine and swell to produces subtle or stronger changes) and then there's acute impact. Foursquare falls in that second category. Rather than trying to imitate human interactions, Foursquare is actually reshaping human interactions to operate like a social network. Because you're connecting with friends through the site, you start thinking of people in terms of networks, you express reactions and make decisions based on the site, and wherever you are, Foursquare is there. And it has the potential to become a conduit and a medium for hanging out, in the same way that Google revolutionized not just the practice internet search, but the concept of searching.

So I'll be watching it closely. I think it could be TNBT. And I believe its success will say much about not only the tech world, but the real world. Whatever that means, these days.

[image one via geekology, image two via MySiam]

On my mind since 2007

Picking up a thread from yesterday:

Maybe the simple act of renunciation, of simplification, is worthwhile enough, even without considering all the "extras" that could be gained. A few months ago -- No, actually it was 2007, now that I checked. Wow. -- A few years ago I wrote something on an old blog about wanting versus having. Here's the post:

August 6, 2007 -- To want is better than to have. This, I concluded, while I was sitting on a park bench and trying to read. My mind started wandering, as usual. To have: fixed, definite, over. To want is process, and consuming, and delicious. I started imagining what I would name my future mini-dachshund. Chloe? Chathulahuextil? Waffle? Walter Mitty? Bernardo? Beezlebub? Until I get him or her, it could be any of these. I am the proud future owner of all or none, at once. And what city will I live in? For years, I'll admit it, I've wanted to find a room of my own. Stop moving every six months. Sit. Stay. Good girl. Now, the act of not moving means I might be anywhere in three years. Boston, New York, San Diego, Rome. All wonderful in a different way. All potentially mine. Ok, so this is banal: Don't commit. We're all so afraid of it in this age, or so the lore goes, that I'm just stating the obvious. It's the "post-modern condition" to be bouncing between binaries. But I'm not afraid of being trapped, or not having options once I make a decision. I can always move, rename the dog, dye my hair a new color... And there will always be new choices. But I'll stop daydreaming about these things, now. Every acquisition or question answered will be the concretization of an abstraction. One less reason to sit on a bench and think. I keep wanting certain material and concrete details of my life to fall into place. But if they don't, or until they do, I am still the root of all of these things: Thursday evening tennis player. Owner of some beautiful dessert plates. Bridge addict. Friend of a flamenco guitarist. About to vacation in India. Each decision is one step closer to definition and delimitation. To have is to not have.

While mostly I agree with myself, I now think it's better to have an actual mini-dachshund regardless of the name rather than have a million phantom dogs you can call whatever you want.

When is without actually with? Is less more, or less?

After yesterday's post about In Praise of Slowness, I've been thinking about the concept of renunciation.

When is deprivation a gesture of shrinking, yielding, renouncing, and when is it actually a path to inflation, growth, expansion? By the same token, doesn't gaining, growing, or adding often result in (expected or unforeseen) constraints and limitations?

But these questions could help me focus my goals in this endeavor. Is a year without internet the best way to conceive of it? Certainly I'll give up many things -- convenience, access, contact, rituals and habits, common ground with my society, perhaps some money. But I think I should be thinking about what could fill those voids. Rather than The year without internet, this could be The year with everything else. Origami. Letter writing. Seeing my grandmother more frequently. Volunteering at the few remaining women's shelters in the state of California. Sampling fine sherries. Playing more piano. Learning a new language. Pretending to learn a language while merely traveling to a new country to buy souvenirs at unforgettable flea markets. And perhaps writing more frequent letters to my grandmother on origami paper.

What I'm getting at is that maybe giving up something for a year isn't that bad. It can be a pathway to plenitude, it can help me become more agile, flexible and open minded, it can cut out a lot of stress (since being connected around the clock, as exhilarating as it is, is also draining). It might feel liberating.

[image of Francis of Assisi, patron of animals and big league giver upper, via wandering wonder]

In Praise of (Cyber) Slowness

 Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness, recently talked to Arianna Huffington about an an epiphany he had a few years ago. He came across a book of one-minute bedtime stories and thought it was a good way to bond with his toddler. Huffington reports, "He suddenly found himself thinking: 'Have I gone completely insane?' " So Honore wrote about slowing down -- is it wise? is it even possible? -- and the origin, evolution and direction of "Slow" movements.

Here's an excerpt from his book:

"Speed can be fun, productive and powerful, and we would be poorer without it. What the world needs, and what the slow movement offers, is a middle path, a recipe for marrying la dolce vita with the dynamism of the information age. The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes in between."

and from Huffington's commentary:

Honore is not some easy-to-dismiss Luddite who wants you to throw your BlackBerry in the river. "This is not a declaration of war against speed," he explains. "Speed has helped remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating." But it can also become "a kind of idolatry."

Even though the main theme of the book is our day-to-day personal obsession with time, rereading the book this week I was struck by how much it also had to say about our financial crisis and the rethinking occasioned by the collapse of free-market fundamentalism. (Huffington liked the book so much she selected it for her new HuffPost Book Club. More here)

So far I'm intrigued by the whole concept of the book, but getting stuck on idea of moderation. A city has many layers, structurally and experientially -- the frantic subway platform versus the calm park above it, but also the relaxed dudes on the platform listening to their ipods, versus the helicopter parents squawking at their kids to play nice on the swings above. It's easy to see how a city can incorporate fast and slow, simultaneously and even in the same spaces.

Same goes for food (preparation and consumption) and sex. Nuance and variation aren't just possible -- they're what help distinguish and determine each of the poles.

But can you sort of slow down your life? Once you make the decision to become calmer and at least look for opportunities to decompress, can you not take them? If slowness seduces you, wouldn't that become your new mode? Won't the "sometimes fast" moments Honore discusses become mere punctuations of the slow ones, a dialectical counterpoint to the calmer baseline? Is balance just a midway step, toward total acquiescence to, or eventual rejection of, slowness?

I haven't read his book yet so I don't know if it touches upon this, but I see an antecedent for the "Slow" movement in mid-19th century France. People were moving from the countryside to the capital in record numbers; the population of Paris hit 1 million in 1846, around the time the electric motor and the telegraph were invented. Poets and novelists were writing about clocks and trains and printing presses, with a sense of frenzy, exuberance, and terror they never had before. And amid the rubble of the old way of life, a new creature emerged: the flaneur, a man who took his time.

This character, which Charles Baudelaire and after him Walter Benjamin wrote about, was known for wearing vintage duds and wandering around the city aimlessly. (The term describes a type of man, not an actual person; the most famous of them had a pet turtle he used to take on walks.) As people rushed to explore Paris's glorious new hotspots -- arcades, train stations, theaters, department stores, art exhibits -- the flaneurs spent their days doing precisely nothing. But that nothing was something: they didn't work, didn't consume, didn't produce a commodity, but instead returned to their scrappy garrets at night and drew or wrote. They studied the city and, in so doing, gave it meaning. Perhaps in a similar vein as Huffington's comment above about how the slow movement -- and the cult of speed -- speak gazillions about the financial crisis, the 19th century flaneurs were also engaging in a political critique. Instead of participating in the tumult of modern life, they chose to sit on the sidelines and watch modernity unfurl before them, like a dream.

For someone sucked into the web day and night, a true e-commodity fetishist, could one solution be to become a cyberflaneur? What would that consist in, and what would it entail?

Well, one thing is certain: If I do go offline for an extended period, this will be at the top of my reading list. Hell, even if I don't.


[second image via kathy koja]

Seeking a why

I got two sobering emails from two friends who often present the voice of reason.

From IGC:

 ...the question is whether the negative repercussions are worth it - -dissertation, email, plane booking, job searching, newspapers, etc.   I think it’s a great idea.   One option would be to limit it to 15 minutes a day, for absolutely necessary things, like emailing your professor.  Or 1 hour once a week or something.

and OD:

1. What is the point of this experiment? What would you be accomplishing by staying off of the internet?

2. I think that this might be crippling and harmful to your career. I'm not quite sure where the future of journalism lies, but I think that it will have something to do with the internet. I am saying this out of ignorance because I don't know anything about journalism, but isn't the internet helpful in getting in touch with sources, doing background research, getting your pieces published in on-line format, etc?

3. I think that not using the internet would be a big imposition on [AR], who presumably would have to post things on-line for you and take care of many of your other internet needs.

4. Not using the internet would make communication with others very difficult. Maybe your friends and family would understand, but potential employers or contacts might find this very annoying and may not consider you for opportunities because they will be forced to go too far out of their way to contact you. (Maybe you wouldn't want to work for these people, anyway, but so much gets decided/done via e-mail these days- not everyone is into picking up the phone).

5. Maybe you could just give up some aspects of the internet. Like give up Facebook or web-surfing for no reason. Maybe you could just use the internet for work and for e-mail.

So far, two ways to work around the logistical and professional difficulties of this proposition. First, moderate -- do it halfway, by staying online for just 10 minutes per day, or one hour per week, or only for work related research -- and second, cease and desist.

I just don't know if I can moderate. And just the anxiety that I may not be able to cut back to only 10 mintues a day or an hour per week -- not knowing if I can resist the urge to check Facebook once I'm on my work email account -- means I have a problem.

OD asks the same thing I've been asking myself: What is the point?

What would make it worthwhile? If I give up time, access, convenience, then I would need to gain something at least comparable in exchange. Time spent on different activities, a different type of access, a new definition of convenience.

Here's what it comes down to: Why am I thinking about giving up the internet for a year? I need to understanding the why before I can tackle the when and the how.

[image via pashnit]

Twisted logic or logically twisted?

Two more thoughts. (As much a function of a slow day as of my growing fascination with this prospect. And, perhaps, the clearest evidence of how hooked I am to this machine. Either that is, or maybe the photo AR took of me this morning, clutching the cell phone in my right hand while I was sleeping. "This will be perfect for your blog!" he chimed. I had just hit the phone's snooze button, ok?? That picture makes me look way more sick than I really am.)

One. I think this would actually motivate me to finish my dissertation faster, as much as getting a job would. First, because there is no way I could research without the net. And I'm not about to add a year to the timeline, after 8 years of patient drudgery. No way no how. Second, giving up the internet would be a change of the same magnitude as starting a new job. Perhaps greater. It would be [drumroll please] an incentive. Which means that maybe the way to play this is to keep plugging away at the diss, apply for jobs, and if I get something great, go for it. But if the economy frowns at me, then when grad school and job search are behind me, I'll smile back. And disconnect.

Two. On the other hand (And I am very much an "other hand" kind of person. I hold long arguments with myself, out loud. There are witnesses.) I keep thinking about how illogical this whole thing is. Why would I ever do such a thing? Am I just enamored by the idea of it, but actually setting myself up for a wipeout? Does it make sense to do this? Maybe I'll resolve to do it, blog about the preparation for months and then fall spectacularly on my face after the first spurt of enthusiasm. Not because I caved like a bulemic at In-n-Out, like a ruffle fiend at Anthropologie, like a recovering reader at the Strand. But because the goal simply fizzled. In a day or week or month after I started, after all this ado, I will simply realize it's not worth it. Not worth the lost time, effort, access, convenience, piece of mind. I'll turn on my computer and check my email as if none of this had ever transpired.

"It's a great time to go offline." Discuss.

Pro:

Going offline is like having a baby. There's never a "good time." But when it happens, you embrace it, sing it to sleep, let it rock your world, and put too many pictures of it on Facebook. Minus the Facebook.

In fact, if I were to give up the internet, this is probably one of the best times to do so. We're in a recession, I don't have a job, and no one is actually depending on my electronic correspondence. I do have a short term writing gig I took on as I wrap up the dissertation, but once that's over, I could pull the plug.

I live close to family and friends, so I wouldn't be lonely. It's not like I'm spending a year abroad and depending on Skype video chats for sustenance.

I have unlimited text messages and a great cell phone plan.

I'm young. I'm spry. I don't have any mouths to feed. I have savings and I got a great deal on my lease. If there's any time in my life when I can take a breather, focus on the roses, travel, read, write, think, it's now. Either that, or retirement.

I have eyes to read with, feet to dance on, dogs to pet, letters to write, windows to insulate. Who needs the internet?

Besides, if I don't have a decent job for one year and scrap together an existence with savings and odd jobs, what's the problem? The market won't correct itself for at least that long, and then I'll have better chances of getting something great, instead of settling.

If I don't do this now, for the rest of my life I will be tethered to my netbook. Time to take charge. Take back my life. Take a virtual valium.

Con:

Disconnecting when I'm unemployed and a recent grad is reckless. Not to mention that there are certain important moments in my life, like graduation, which are looming, and which would benefit from internet planning and coordination. Hotel rooms. Invitations. Airfare research.

Most importantly, searching for a job with no internet access means I'd probably only be able to work for... myself? Since I'm the only person who would hire someone that... "interesting." Only then I wouldn't be able to afford my own services.

I would miss the critical post-graduation window and lose momentum.

My savings are for important goals like retirement, healthcare disasters and quality coffee, not income for a strange anti-technology experiment.

Leases expire, rents go up.

And rewriting my life to fit to this arbitrary constraint of "no internet" is at least as unhealthy, selfish and irrational as feeding a totally manageable internet addiction.

Ambivalence:

Meh.