Internet, Tinder and the City

New ways of encounters and interaction in hybrid public spaces.

Starting with my thesis (Eterea) I’ve been very interested in how the new technologies affect the way we behave and interact with others and physical spaces around us. At that time I especially focused on the role of infrastructure as it was the basics to arrive to the following steps of “smart cities” and connected everything. So I began with Wi-fi specificity in Milan, also learning a lot about general features of internet connection as not just a digital services, but a physically present network redefining our understanding of boundaries and limits of spaces and the way we approach tangible environment. You can see the long story in my thesis posts, or int he following presentation which summarizes my findings about Internet and the city for the short lecture to design and architecture students:

This research recently took a new turn with my personal interest in Tinder and other dating apps and their sudden spread and new level of social acceptance. I’ve performed 4 months of both practical digital ethnography research on Tinder as well as learning a lot from multiple theoretical sources and summarized it int he other lecture:

You can also see the full video version of it:

And soon I will put it in a form a short essay, also adding some new findings and conclusions, stay tuned!