I went to the Decode exhibit at the V&A Museum several weeks ago, and when Russell Davies came to talk to Platform yesterday, it made me start thinking about my experience.
The exhibit was fascinating, but 90% of the exhibit were interactive things on a SCREEN. My favorite part of the whole thing were these reeds (see picture below) that you had to walk through at the entry. The more you ran your hands along them, the more they’d twinkle and make noise. That was the best part of the exhibit, because it was something digital that I could tangibly experience.
Here’s a few points Russell made yesterday that made the wheels start turning:
Screens are distancing people. Whether this is through operating military drones remotely, or our obsession/dependence on facebook & email, I do feel like the last several years of growth in social media have created a separation. Sometimes it seems like the answer to every problem a brand faces is to create a digital community of some kind. I am so sick of communities. And I’m not sure if this is because I’m so immersed in the advertising world that I’ve become numb to it, or we truly are over-saturating our environment. But after staring at my screen every day, the last thing I want to do is have my “human/social interaction” occur on my computer when I get home.
Using social media used to be interesting, and now is cliché. As Russell explained (and I know from my experience in letterpress), the term “cliché” was used in movable type printing. If a phrase was used frequently, they’d cast a single slug of it so they wouldn’t have to individually set the letters each time. Something that used to be interesting, when used over and over again, bores the daylights out of you.
Years ago, things like Facebook and Twitter were new and exciting. There were only a few to choose from, and only those on the cutting edge of culture knew about it. Today, most people participate in at least 4 digital communities, and it seems like every brand is trying to jump on this bandwagon. Personally, I see right through it. How can we create meaningful brand experiences without contributing to all the JUNK that’s already out there? Is the answer to create fewer, more individually targeted experiences that are great, and gain exposure from the few involved sharing it virally? I’m not sure I have the answer, but I’m curious to see how it evolves.
The internet is a wonderful thing that has allowed us access to things we never could before. My mother has reconnected with cousins and relatives she’s never met before, I’ve been able to collaborate with people in countries across the world, and keep in touch with my friends back home while living in London. However, I do feel like in order for me to be on top of what is happening in the world, the resources I need are on the internet, and it makes me feel trapped. I want to be able to accomplish more by getting out from behind my computer screen, and I want to help create content that can enable others to do the same. What is the future of our digital dependence? Where will we go next?
Amen, twin! You already know I am drinking the same digital dependence kool-aid as you, so I don’t need to repeat what you just said but yes yes yes. I certainly agree – something I think about alot is that just because we CAN do something, doesn’t mean we should.
As I was flying back to Ausitn a few weeks ago, I was sitting there thinking about how much I love riding in airplanes….and then I realized, you know what? As crazy as this is, perhaps I love being up here so much is that esecially now with my iphone and internet access being ubiquitous, being 35,000 feet in an airplane is literally the only place in teh world I am not connected.