We live in Public Reflection
Josh Harris is an American entrepreneur who started multiple companies when the internet was first becoming popular. He specialized in making chat rooms and streaming originally popular online.
We live in public/quiet was a social experiment conducted by Josh Harris. This is very similar to reality TV today, the premise of the social experiment had 100 people living in New York City in a capsule hotel with free food and drinks for a month. There were cameras everywhere recording the people in the social experiment. The difference between “Quiet and We Live in Public” and current reality TV, is “We Live in Public” is extremely unethical. All people who participated were interrogated, forced to wear a uniform, they were not allowed to leave, and lastly they were filmed 24/7.
I took away a couple of main points from the documentary. There are many similarities between Harris’s experiments and today’s social media, nowadays just like in the experiment everyone has a monitor or a screen with video capabilities, and people can connect with virtually anyone who also owns some type of technology that can connect to the internet. One of the main aspects that arose from these simulations was the fact that people became desensitized to the camera, and everyone had the chance to be famous and be recognized with their camera and access to the internet.
The early internet was very different from what it is now. In the late 90’s dial-up connections were standard, limiting access and speed. Web pages were very text-heavy. Social media platforms didn’t exist The primary forms of online interaction were email, message boards, and text chat rooms.
Josh Harris predicted what our future would look like with the internet and social connectivity. Harris focused on the cultural and social impact of the internet. Harris thought that the internet would be a place where people constantly documented and broadcasted their lives online, erasing the lines between private and public domains. He came to this conclusion because he noticed that people are driven by attention and fame.
Harris was able to conduct his experiments because people were motivated by the fact that they could become famous. Additionally, in his first experiment, there were essentially no rules in the community, the participants were given free food, drinks, and drugs. Participants could essentially do whatever they wanted, and it was free to them. The kicker was the video captured was owned by Harris. Participants were filmed at all times of the day. Cameras captured everything from the dining hall to the bathrooms, nothing was hidden.
Looking to current times in many ways Harris’s predictions have come true. With the rise of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch constant self-broadcasting is normalized, and people make millions of dollars off of it every year. Additionally, his experiments were closely related to modern reality TV. Reality TV and live streaming are incredibly popular forms of entertainment.
Harris’s early predictions about the internet and how it would grow offer an interesting view of the anxieties and hopes of the early internet era. While Harris was not fully correct, he highlighted the social and cultural impact that the internet has had on civilians. The internet has fostered a culture of self-broadcasting and attention-seeking, just like Harris predicted.
