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I’ve stepped in deeper puddles
July 3rd, 2007 posted by Adam
I constantly tell my kids they need to share their toys. I quote Seneca to them - “There is no delight in owning anything unshared.” They’re young but maybe one day they’ll get it.
Then I think… what a hypocrite am I! I own an iPod! The “I” being very much symbolic of “backoff, get your own sandwich!”
Technology has empowered us to consume content in very personal and private ways and changed many of the social aspects we once associated with the consumption of cultural content such as movies, concerts, sporting events, etc.
In the same breath, technology has also empowered us to reach out to seemingly infinite communities spanning time and distance to form new variations and permutations of these same shared experiences.
While I have no definitive argument, pro or otherwise, to the question does technology create a society of isolationists, I have no shortage of HO. I can only surmise that this question might have first crept up when the phonograph was introduced. In my lifetime I know the Sony Walkman brought the subject back into mainstream discussion and since then many disruptive technologies have again brought the debate back to the table.
I am an avid consumer of content, and, just as tell my kids to share, I feel a need to share my impressions of that solitary experience with others in conversation - quite often through inappropriate segues so I might hear the sound of my own voice 
Still there is something amiss in my quest to view all that is viewable ( I can’t wait until the day I “finish” surfing the net ) - I think I’ll call it depth.
What I mean by that statement is this – while I am eager to delve into conversations and reach out via email, SMS, any one of a dozen social network sites, internet chat, etc… I find that the immediacy of the medium pales in comparison to the dialogue Im able to engage in when wrapped up in a roundtable discussion. Sometimes I’m too famished to snack… I need time at an all you can eat buffet while the hostess takes her coffee break. The passion, the spontaneity, a few important senses we use to communicate are all lost when wallowing in the shallow conversational puddles provided by the aforementioned tools. Exit Skype, Enter VIDFEST!
It is therefore no surprise that I revel in the fact that we work in an industry where the best of both worlds is so readily abundant. I have the tools to sow the seeds of conversation and make new connections via technology and then have those snack size relationships blossom in an industry ripe with conferences and workshops and camps galore where the buffet tables are plush with goodies and go on for miles.
The Vancouver International Digital Festival is a favourite. It is the only event on home turf that draws out those people I connect with online from across the great divide, the 49th parallel, the Atlantic and the Pacific. My only regret is that it only affords three days to get in my fix. I firmly believe that the tools and toys we play with and personalize to the point that they may as well hold our DNA are the catalysts necessary to maintain the age old tradition of congregation. Indeed we are now seeing our personal toys becoming the evolutionary tools to create unique shared experiences though another New Media BC initiative, Mobile Muse and its focus on “Live Sites”.
Damn, can’t wait to have that worked into VIDFEST! See ya there.
