Digital Mindfulness: The Quiet Place
The phrase “welcome to the quiet place,” lines across the center of the fourth page of the quiet place, greeting the user after being delivered instructions to utilize the space bar of a keyboard to operate through the website, tapping gently with new words, each lining the screen subsequently. The phrases also instruct the user to turn on their speakers or headphones, as well as silence their phone, explaining that it would be “pointless otherwise.” With these conditions in place, the user is ready to truly enter the website, and find their “quiet place.” The website was created in the summer of 2011 by Amitay Tweeto, an Israeli interface designer, whose work attempts to both provide commentary on the effects of social media in the digital age, as well as provide an accessible and interactive medium for users to practice what one may call ‘digital mindfulness.’ Today, one could say that Tweeto was certainly a frontrunner in crafting a medium for individuals to practice this form of meditation, especially with the now popular apps like Headspace, Calm, and Meditation Studio. The Quiet Place, as do said apps, propose the question of achieving peace in a new age of notifications. However, in analyzing The Quiet Place, users unearth that digital mindfulness, though evolved from its basic form, perhaps emphasizes more of a lack of ability to sit still in the digital era, rather than serves as a remedy to said problem.
Ironically, Tweeto’s website, encouraging users to do nothing but enjoy the present moment unbothered by the responsibilities of being online, is completed by being online. In this respect, one may find that this is how users craft their own narratives within the quiet place. The specific order of how the text is generated is the same for all users of the website. The words lack a use of capitalization, something linguistically, is especially present in writing in the digital age, providing both an homage to writing in social media, while also crafting a truly quiet tone. Users are greeted, the text writes of various phrases commenting on social media’s impact upon the user’s life, ambient music plays in the background, and finally it asks the user to take thirty seconds to do nothing, just be — simultaneously, a timer counts down from thirty as the user reflects in their own personal quiet place. At the end of the user’s experience, the quiet place makes note of the peaceful moment the user is (likely) undergoing, before bidding them farewell, and encouraging the user to remember to return to their quiet place again and again. This ending is marked with additional irony, where the final page states, “we’re back to normal, it is now safe to share,” including Tweeto’s personal Instagram and twitter pages underneath, encouraging the user to participate in social media once more with the very person behind the website who inspired them not to just minutes prior.
Something that should be addressed is that, although The Quiet Place is a website marked with instructions that follow the same rhythm, it is the individual user’s experience that represents the website as a narrative. One may easily find that Tweeto’s digital narrative is crafted through the individual pacing as selected by the user, and simultaneously, the thoughts that cross their mind as the text progresses. This is especially certain in the thirty second countdown whereby the user is left to go to whatever peaceful mental setting they choose to reach in their micro-meditation. Evidence can be found through the various experiences as reported from users as seen on the front page of the website. Users can see that the entirety of the background is made up of profile pictures fit with captions that one may see upon placing a cursor over the image, each praising the individual venture they had, all while using the same website. This highlights the quiet place’s spot in the internet as a safe place for all, across boundaries, as well as a place for common ground even though each narrative experience is unique to the user.
Having addressed The Quiet Place’s setting in the realm of digital narrative, one must now interrogate how the function of Tweeto’s website serves as a digitized form of mindfulness. It begs one to question how successful it truly is. Or, on the contrary, does The Quiet Place actually reinforce the idea that, in the digital age, people possess an inability to stop fidgeting and the website only fortifies that same understanding? As already stated, in order to “turn off” one’s notifications and find a sense of peacefulness users are required to use the internet, meaning they must still access a computer or smartphone. Moreover, one may ask why Tweeto selected a thirty second timer for users to feel mindful, rather than a longer length of time where meditation traditionally takes place. Similarly, one may ask if it’s effective to stare into a screen to practice mindfulness, rather than perhaps with their eyes closed and seated on a pillow, as one conventionally does. Can peacefulness really be achieved in the approximately seventy seconds worth of reading text and then thirty seconds spent in one’s quiet place? It is comprehensible for most users to report a sense of feeling at ease with the use of The Quiet Place and its comforting commentary on a sense of uneasiness in the digital age, only it seems that the remedy it provides is insufficient.
It is no coincidence that the quiet place was created in the digital era, especially in 2011, in which the world was truly beginning to grasp the early stages of how social media and notifications were affecting how we think. With that being said, Amitay Tweeto undoubtedly does highlight an undeniable fact: the internet was created and thus (more than likely) is here to stay. Without a proper means to maintain good health in a constant bombardment for notifications, people are, and quite simply will be, stressed out and inattentive. But, however, can people ever truly unplug?
