Alone in a crowd with content (day 197)

Crowds and crowds and lineups and free food and free drinks and loud music and people moving in streams.  It reminded me of the dot com days but this time the crowd was much more mixed.  Some from those days and some younger, and a mix of men and women.   A big emphasis on social media.  Almost too much.  It's somewhat suspicious in its pervasiveness.  Like we're praising at the altar.  This too reminded me of the bubble ten years ago.  A constant consumerism vibe with products being offered as we travel from venue to venue.  Even the 'we can end this' campaign had to adopt a similar tactic to get attention.  Because in a place where distraction is the mode of being, attention is currency.  Very little eye contact.  Most people had their eyeballs on their screens.

For me the most exhausting thing was being alone in a crowd.  I didn't see anyone I knew but I laughed and was frustrated with them, and read their tweets.  I felt strange about going to parties alone and this made the lineups that much more daunting.  So I came home to my new hotel which is a far cry from the Hilton where I spent the first night.   I asked Yelp to tell me where to eat and ended up at this Lebanese cubicle in a strip mall.  Context is everything.  Yes it's a 4 star in this neighbourhood, no doubt.

So what about content in this chaos?  I'm happy to say there is some content.  I attended a talk on design for awareness that had some interesting points about how to created a state of augmented mindfulness.  It's too bad the talk was not well attended.  From the tweets, I know that people were in the iPad panel.  Robert Fabricant of Frog Design gave a great talk on how data collection and presentation can motivate people into making changes.  He exemplified the challenge by showing someone craving fried chicken at time t, and not wanting diabetes at time t+x -- we are not temporally consistent in our desires.  It is possible both want fried chicken and not want diabetes because they are not immediately and not completely correlated.  That, and the fact that habits are physically compelling, make changing things really really hard.   Fabricant talked of the design challenges in convincing people to collect data (if it's not automatic), convince them to spend time with the reporting, and then make sure they know what to do, and then help them make the change.  Enough to keep designers busy for a while.

Also attended a talk by Danah Boyd, on privacy and publicity.  She had lots to say on the equivalence of privacy and control.  That people may be more public but it does not mean they want to be publicized.  She also talked about the privilege of being able to share and the crowd's rejection of some, and the fear of some.  Hiding is sometimes a necessity and in a pinch this is hard to do if you're all over the web.  She didn't take any questions.

The last talk of the day was a conversation with Ze Frank which was entertaining, heart-warming, and bemusing.  Ze is a funny man.  I'd say he's joyful and human but sometimes his entertaining side gets the better of him.  When he was in balance he was amazing.  I'd say this talk/interview/performance was the best I saw today.  I laughed and cried.  I loved his 'children songs for adults series' -- one about being scared and another for when you're overwhelmed.  I thought it was interesting that he made these in response to request from his followers and with the help of his followers in the case of the second one.  There was a kind of vulnerability that I thought was really sweet...perhaps the best of social media.  Someone in the audience asked him if there was a limit to the world going faster and faster.  Were we going to reach a breaking point.  He was very dismissive of her question which I found surprising.  He switched into making fun at her expense.  It's too bad.  I think it's an interesting question because it begs all kinds of questions -- how are things faster?  Are we doing more things? Thinking more things?  Being asked more things?  Are any of these things controllable?  Is everyone's life faster? Faster than what? What happens if we refuse to go faster?  There are so many directions to take this question.  Perhaps it's worth a panel on its own.  I think she asked the question to the wrong crowd.

A song for this post.