Being and (Real) Time

The digital life made interpersonal communications easier. No doubt about it. In the past, the telegraph, the radio and the telephone also allowed two way communications. Make people closer apparently was not the main purpose when other ways of sending and spreading one way messages came to life, such as TV and other mass media.

Originally all communications took place in real time and in a common context. People talking to other people, face to face. Transmitting traditions, information and culture in real time. It was the only way to accomplish this task before the written codes were invented. In one hand this fact helped keep record of histories which would not survive only through oral tradition, but on the other hand transmitting messages would be free from real time limitations. The writing also allowed a longer reach for the messages written in stone, wood, paper and other media; and they could be preserved for more time, crossing generations and thus shifting the original context in which they were crafted, allowing new (and sometimes undesirable) interpretations.

And then Internet happened.

When we discuss social media it is usual to forget about integration and interaction to focus on apps. Simultaneously it is possible to talk to people far away and close, providing proximity, information, entertainment. If only the tool was lees important than the messages it carries…

This ways of interaction (which sometimes become a monologue to people that could not care less) are filtered and tagged in personal timelines, with variable influence. They create interruptions in other daily events and demand attention. At any time anywhere. The buses became a space of interaction with people that are elsewhere. Real time in a virtual space. Lots of people literally elsewhere while in transit. But not present in the same space and time. It is almost an out-of-the-body experience. And the very same people — those which were close in a virtual moment in real time — when share the same space, seek for company which are anywhere else at that precise time. Like an escape pod from right here, right now.

There should be some kind of hierarchy, or at least an agreement, to privilege the ones which share the same space and time, then the ones that are far away. Something like storing cell phones when you share a meal with someone else. Time to talk to real people in real time without digital activities. To be present at the same time and space at least for a few minutes. Maybe (and this is a big maybe) all the malaise of an impossible to explain solitude in a city with millions of people could be ended. In my humble opinion the problem is not on the devices…