Screen surfing beats real surfing any day!
Notes:
Last weekend, I witnessed a scene at Manly beach that inspired the above illustration. It was a beautiful, sunny day with surfers carving their white trails in pristine waves. Tourists come from around the world to witness such beauty, and yet blocking my view of the surfing was a large screen surrounded by people riveted to video footage of surfing.
Is this a sign of things to come? With ever-greater leaps in technological sophistication is it just a matter of time before real life will be unable to compete for our attention? Does this even matter?
Let’s discuss this in the comments below.
Your thoughts…
What are the consequences of the virtual world becoming more appealing than the real world?
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20 Responses to this post
March 12, 2010 at 7:11 am |
Hey Robin,
An interesting question.
To live vicariously isn’t living at all. Although the expression ‘real life’ is a tenuous description. Perhaps the biggest problem is that many people feel the need to experience events via technology.
Visit any major art gallery in any capital city and you’ll find people taking more time to photograph a Van Gogh than they will actually looking at it.
For several years I’ve covered some significant equestrian events as a photographer and stopped really enjoying them due to the need to obtain the ‘money shot.’
It was for this very reason that I never, ever took a camera with me when going to F1 races around the world. In over twenty circuit visits I don’t have one single photograph. Do I wish I had? Absolutely not. I can remember every tiny detail of each trip and I saw and experienced things I’d never have done if I hadn’t embraced the event, warts and all.
Real life is about flesh and blood. It’s about the senses. It’s what makes an artist, a writer. It’s what makes a human being. The long-term social effects of rapid changes in technology are very often in conflict with a human being’s slow, ponderous evolutionary psychology.
Life is messy. Technology creates the illusion that it’s neatly packaged. As for real life being able to compete. I have faith it will. The virtual experience is a sanitised one. I want to be able to smell, taste, see, feel and touch my life. I don’t just want to watch an other person’s version of it.
March 12, 2010 at 4:07 pm |
Thanks, Luke. That’s fascinating input.
Could it be that because you’ve had the years to fully experience life in the pre-tech world, you have strong visceral references from which to draw and compare?
What of the younger generations coming through? They don’t appear to have such a rich reference base with which to ‘compete’ with such sophisticated online experiences.
Thanks for kicking this discussion off.
Best to you, Robin
March 12, 2010 at 8:02 pm |
Hey Luke
I agree with Robin – fascinating input. I too have been at famous things and just had people taking photos. There’s a photo of me at the Louvre, surrounded by photographers, and I’m just standing still looking!
Also – great – “Life is messy. Technology creates the illusion that it’s neatly packaged.”
So here’s my angle for you and Robin.
I have a 7 year old brother, and already he is attached to his Nintendo DS. Reading stories, going for walks, etc etc – not interested. I’m trying to break him out of the cycle.
Because that’s what we have – cycles of technological addiction. We’re addicted to the screen.
I was deeply impressed by Chris Brogan. When he was on his laptop, he was fully doing his thing. But the moment anyone spoke to him, he closed it and paid full attention. Then I noticed he never used his mobile. He never touched it, used it to tweet – nothing. Then I begin to notice how when he is with people he completely focusses on what is happening there and then, immerses himself into the fun, and forgets about the internet and everything else.
Marrying Technology and an appreciate for real life calls for knowing how to switch the tool off, and appreciate what the tool was built to enhance.
March 12, 2010 at 8:14 pm |
March 12, 2010 at 8:13 pm (Edit) | Reply
Thanks, Scott.
I would love to see that photo. And I guess that’s part of my problem – technology provides such immediate and entertaining access. It’s like a golden pass to every-experience land.
You brother’s ‘attachment’ mirrors much of what I have seen here. I was at a restaurant recently observing four children sitting with two adults. All four kids where glued to the DS machines. Riveted. Completely focused. Indifferent to their surroundings, their parents – even the food when it arrived was an unwanted interruption.
Is this just the next stage in our ‘evolution’?
Who’s to say how much is too much for kids? For us?
Wonderful to get your quality input, mate.
Best to you, Robin
PS: I hope your ears weren’t burning in your sleep today as I was singing the praises of you and LikeMinds to a potential sponsor.
March 12, 2010 at 9:00 pm |
I’m uploading the photo as we speak
I think what is important here is to understand technology isn’t bad. It is an enabler. We just sometimes become more enamoured with the tools than what they are meant to be enabling.
March 12, 2010 at 9:04 pm |
Thanks as well for speaking me up!
lol – was it online that you were speaking to this potential sponsor?
March 12, 2010 at 9:14 pm |
You’re very welcome. This time is was actually face-to-face!
I’ll report progress as it comes to hand.
March 12, 2010 at 10:20 pm |
Hey Scott and Robin,
Irony = I actually only just caught up with this after switching off for a while to recharge and think through some things.
Scott, you really summed it up with ‘Marrying Technology and an appreciate for real life calls for knowing how to switch the tool off, and appreciate what the tool was built to enhance.’ And your example of Chris Brogan’s discipline highlights that physical, human contact ought to take precedence over the more virtual kind.
The reference to addiction is really apt. Dependancy takes many forms. I had the same problem with my daughters when they were much younger. Whether a games console, TV or computer. It really worried me so I tried some reverse psychology. The deal was that for every hour watching TV etc. there had to be an hour being outside, exploring, visiting somewhere, reading, painting etc. It worked but I’m not suggesting for one minute it’s the answer.
In Robin’s example of the children in the restaurant, I too have seen this. But there’s a social responsibility needed from adults to teach, encourage and develop social skills.
And I guess that’s what’s changing, or at least in conflict at the moment. Chris’s social skills are obviously very acute and that sense of balance is necessary. Technology doesn’t come with any small print that says we are exempt from respecting others as well as ourselves.
Just a thought, but maybe this has a huge impact on social media insomuch that if we’re to be successful in life, we have to fine-tune our social skills in every area?
Great input from everyone.
Best to you guys. Catch you later, Luke
March 13, 2010 at 2:20 am |
PS Scott – Chris Brogan told me (coz I asked!
) he gets twitchy whenever he cant check twitter, blogs, etc. as soon as he is out of reach he is disconnected….
Not saying good or bad, just interesting….
I love being out of touch (but then you know that!)
March 13, 2010 at 7:52 am |
Sure he gets twitchy, but he does turn it off. I spent the whole weekend with him and saw it in action. For someone whose entire life is social media, I was exceptionally impressed by how little time he spent on it over the time he was with us.
March 12, 2010 at 8:15 pm |
I can’t see it ever happening. People love the analogue because they can touch and feel – it’s tactile and has real physical presence. People like real sounds and smells. I can see a post-digital revert to analogue happening. Speaking for myself, I used to read a lot on in ebook format, Kindle etc, but I’ve stopped. I value the book more. I like the drying touch of the paper, the smell of the ink, the scraping sound of turning the page and the battery never runs out on a book. I like to put a book on my bookshelf when I have read it almost as a trophy. I like to lend these books to friends and share the experience. I like to print photos and put them on the wall or in an album.
Digital is certainly a great way to connect with people but it’s just a starting point. When you meet them in person – that’s when the magic happens.
This is a nice example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVMnmTFxAjA
March 12, 2010 at 8:28 pm |
Hey Jaime, welcome to RADSMARTS – and thanks for your excellent input. You write a wonderfully appealing description of the value of real books. Real – and digital. You’ve triggered imagery and other sensory experiences in my brain.
It’s as if we have shared an experience. A real experience.
In your opinion, do you think technological advancements may take us to the point where we truly can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined – on screen? Reminds me of ‘the feelies’ in Huxley’s Brave New World. Or a more modern version is Shrek 3D, where we even got sprayed with water mist in the cinema!
Jaime, your website looks excellent. So, SocialGloo is in the stickiness business. What a good idea! There’s a real sense of commercial edge at your site. Well done.
Best to you and SocialGloo.
Robin
March 12, 2010 at 8:46 pm |
Thanks Robin
You never know where technology is going to take us (someone told me recently that if we applied Moore’s law to the aviation industry it would now cost about 5 cents to fly from London to new york and if you forgot your toothbrush it would be cheaper to fly home and get it than buy a new one) but if it got to the stage that it was so advanced that a gadget could look, feel, smell, and have the physical presence of a paperback that changes smell with age and get’s bit of snot and chocolate stuck to it and more dog eared the more people who read it – that you could stack it on a shelf that gathers dust then we truly would be in a sad place! What would be the cost financially and emotionally? Would it be more than $3 that you pay for a second hand book? Would you still share it with a friend and write your name on the inside cover? Could it end the physicality of book sharing?
The program Red Dwarf was quite visionary on the virtual reality life – where the characters became addicted like a drug to their virtual world and basically got hooked up to a drip to support their body which was no more use to them than a shell to keep the brain alive.
Nothing good can come from virtuality because it would only be good experience and when would the experiences stop being good when there is no bad to balance them out?
I love technology but I hope it’s always a means to a physical and tactile end.
I heard that someone printed and bound all their Instapaper saves, bound them and took them on hols to read on the beach because they were just growing and fading into obscurity on the virtual server somewhere, never to be read – that’s when digital meets analogue again! What a great idea. I also heard of some guys printing their blog as a real newspaper and people loved it – ‘so retro’.
When I look back a the macro of the life – whatever it is it’s usually trend based. I can see people going back to analogue.
Thanks for your comments on SocialGloo – it’s just a little project which I hope to expand. If you would ever like to guest post I’d love it.
March 12, 2010 at 9:16 pm |
I know people we paid to see the Bee Gees in Sydney, paid an enormous amount of money and were so far back that they couldn’t make out the faces of the performers…BUT, that didn’t matter because “there were huge screens that we could watch”!
Bit like going to an authentic Italian restaurant, sitting in the foyer and having them serve you up a McCain’s Pizza!
March 12, 2010 at 9:28 pm |
That’s really funny, Robert.
I’m laughing with you, not at you!
What’s worse is that I watched video footage online of those people watching the Bee Gees on video screens at the concert. It’s like a never ending virtual Russian Doll.
What’s the attraction of going to ‘live’ events to watch video screens?
Did you see the U2 live video feed recently? The quality was amazing. I was sitting in my office watching a live U2 concert in the comfort of my own home. What did I miss by not being at the live event? I don’t know – but I really enjoyed the show.
Great to see your input, Robert.
Robin
March 13, 2010 at 2:17 am |
What are the consequences of the virtual world becoming more appealing than the real world?
Shudder….and what a BIG question….
I am no hater of technology (even if I am a bit slow to catch on to it all) – it enables people to live their lives, to connect, to breathe, to do so many things for which the world would be a much worse place without.
But when this becomes BETTER than real stuff – …urgh
If that ever happens, that, surely, is when we stop living. When we live the world through the touch of a keyboard and the glow of a screen we stop feeling what is going on around us – we become removed, distant and detached . What is the point of a real world, if we can see it better, in 3D, and sanitised on our screens?
You talk of books like Brave New World and its feelies – but Brave New World was an horrific vision of a dystopian world, where the only people who had authentic feelings were branded savage and made to live outside society (lucky them I say)… where sex was taboo, and creativity thwarted. Feelies were there to fool the population into thinking “it was all OK”.
Its like the Matrix where a virtual world became the real world, and where the real world was a shattered wasteland. But, the joy of the wasteland was freedom… and that is the crux. The real world – even with all its horror – is about the freedom of thought, of understanding and of the creativity of our own minds.
As a mother of two small children, the path ahead is an interesting (and perhaps frightening) one. I simply cannot deny them access to technology – to do so would be putting them at such a huge disadvantage; it would be like shackling them. But I want them to enjoy the feeling of turning the page of a book (I love the people who print stuff to take on holiday), playing games, living life…
(Luckily for me – story time still wins out every time!!! – but I know I am lucky)
Surely the real world has to win …. its why we are who we are?
Got me thinking on a Fri afternoon – thank you Robin.
March 13, 2010 at 10:12 am |
Sophy, might be worth watching this. Scary, but also interesting:
http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/
May 7, 2010 at 8:20 pm |
Love the visuals Robin.
To answer your question, I perceive one negative aspect of an increased reliance on Virtual realities, is the dehumanization of our society.
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