We Live In Public
I have a huge amount of respect for Josh Harris as he shed light on our possible future. And he was right.
As said by so many people in the documentary, “We Live in Public”, Josh was right about everything he set out to prove. It may have taken us over 10 years to get there but he was right. Of course, we’re not living with a complete loss of privacy as in the documentary but the idea still stands. We have gone from being digital to digital beings. We have gotten to that stage where we rely on our technology for work and for fun. For entertainment we watch other people. With Social Media as popular as it is, it has allowed for someone with a phone and an internet connection anywhere in the world to become that person.
Him and his girlfriend even embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities and bathroom habits. This describes our culture today with people doing things like Twitch streaming, Only Fans, Live YouTube Streaming and Instagram Live. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.
I personally wouldn’t want to be in any of those experiments. Most people wouldn’t, and that’s what makes Josh a pioneer. He opened our minds to the possibilities of what the future holds and was 100% committed to it. Going as far as to sacrifice his relationship for it. Going back to the first experiment, we saw people attempting to cope with each other for a while but seeming to falter near the end.
If we look at Cognitive Surplus chapter 6, Clay Shirky talks about different kinds of participation ranging from personal to communal to public to civic. And I wonder where these participants lie. Are they participating for the betterment of the community or for personal gain? (Shirky, 174). I believe the group experimented on divided into the different participation types. Some participating for personal gain and some participating for the sake of the experiment. I feel as though Alana Heiss was one of the people involved in the experiment for personal gain as her body language and tone when speaking about wanting to be in the experiment portrayed that feeling.
I personally did not like where the experiment went towards the end as I believe that people did not know what to do with all the freedom that they had. The ability to walk around naked, eat whenever they wanted, shoot guns, do no work etc. It caused some of them to “lose their minds” and cause a lot of mental stress. This may have been cause by the interrogation part of the experiment which I definitely did not like. It appeared as thought the participants were very submissive and were doing whatever they could to stay down there.
With regards to the experiment on himself and his girlfriend I believe that the outcome was expected as the constant interaction with the live chat caused them to drift apart. This was because each of them garnered their own fans. This meant they were more concerned with what their fans thought and not eachother. Towards the end we saw Josh become more aggressive towards his girlfriend and even wanted her gone out of the apartment. Josh stated that “He probably would’ve married her if they didn’t do this experiment.”
In the end, Josh was right about the future, people living online and in public. He may not be praised for his methods but he was right and the only person who was able to prove it.
References
(2010). In C. Shirky, Cognitive Surplus (pp. 161–182). Penguin Books LTD.
Timoner, O. (Director). (2009). We Live in Public [Motion Picture].
~SUDS
