September 18, 2007
In this post-Einstein world where relativism has become the dominant lens through which one thing sees another, we ought to take a moment to consider what are the common underlying components driving students to pass notes during class and while at home, asking our Grandmother what she did this week. Technology is pretty sharp but its not exactly able yet to read our minds. We still need to pull text or image out of our imagination and put it onto a medium that allows others to relate. That’s called communication. That’s why Jennifer A. in Math Class passes Brad P. a note. She has issues or humor she wants to share and she is driven by some sense of urgency. She needs to relate in real time. Just as when we ask our Grandmothers “what did you do this week?” we are interested because we value our relationship with her and are urged forthright by a sort of fatal urgency. Relationships between you and your Grandmother and the example of Jennifer and Brad illustrate the value of relationships and the desire if not the need to communicate immediately in real time.
In a quick and constantly shrinking world we ought to recognize that contact zones are popping up everywhere: from airports to the corner store to the world-wide-web. To address these contact zones, particularly those on the world-wide-web we ought to utilize tools that it provides to their full potential because "reality" and "real trime" are not just terms reserved for the entertainment and technological arena. They originate in our daily lives amongst our classmates, friends, and family. These relationships founded in flesh and brick and mortar can be developed infinitely by the careful and conscious use of the internet's abilities of displaying compressions of real time and instantaneous world-wide attention.
But while we are stuck in our flesh and limited to travel at speeds far below the speed of light we ought to utilize the technologies that are able to travel at the speeds we dream of. Justin Kan, the pioneer of what he named Life-Casting (the term is already being used by artists who make a physical mold of a particular person) may indeed be an unwitting founding father of a movement with the potential to be driven by idealism and customer demand. At present, Justin.tv contain links to others doing much of the same nothing as he is doing. What they are doing is using wireless capabilities to stream live footage onto the website.
How does this affect me or my future? I’m not an action-hero narcissistic celebrity exhibitionistic model. I’m just me: nine to five, dinner with the wife and kids a - little television - a little bedtime story and repeat. I plead to differ. Everyone, despite how little they think that they matter, matters much more than they could ever imagine. Everyday choices are made by millions of these people who think that they are too small to matter. Suddenly all the “little” decisions made by people who think they do not matter are supported by constituency in the millions. Because we should always aim for the ideal, we should consider what kind of “good” this wireless streaming technology may propagate. Clothing, for one example, today is largely disposable and cotton is a major cause of water pollution. Proliferation is largely due to fashion magazines, however also people like to feel the high associated with something brand new and most clothing stores are not going to break your budget. Clothing is cheap today because it is mass produced by people who are worked like slaves in conditions that we would not accept. Because clothing matters to me I want an artisan to put a bit of their soul, their love, their own imagination into it. I will pay a premium and shop less. So I want to imagine a world in which the Gap or some major retailer mounts live streaming cameras in their manufacturing facilities so that I may look onto their website and see hard working people in kind conditions before I shop at their store. Because the technology is available and relatively inexpensive this is absolutely not too much for consumers to demand.
The technology could provide professional instruction and inspiration in an apprenticeship mode. The ability of a student to follow professionals through their daily work life may be more elucidating and inspiring than a high school or college counselor has ever before. Or perhaps your Grandmother has been admitted to the hospital in Seattle and unfortunately you can not be there in person because you can’t get out of Chicago. Register with the website and log into the Seattle hospital’s website and you could see Grandma lying in bed watching the Golden Girls. You could text her. She can text you back in real time. Now that is real-time.