How does the performance of a cellular network degrade with extremely high density and usage, such as Barcelona — Real Madrid at the 98,000 capacity Camp Nou, where real-time sending rich media such as photos and video was impractical. Most of the game updates happened on the way back from the match, rather than at the stadium itself.

In a world where ever more of our experiences are documented, near-time how does the mass documentation of the same experience impact our desire to document? Does the personal, social and historical value of an event rise if in effect it cannot be documented in realtime — it’s value driven by scarcity? And if this was the case, how would an event organiser throttle bandwidth or open up the network to everyone effectively overloading the network and having a similar impact as throttling?

I’d guess that it’ll polarise the desire to capture experiences: to those where the sheer scale (or tempo, cadence) of an event becomes the reason for documenting. At the other end of the spectrum where no formal documentation is a sign of the event’s value, a shared agreement that leaving it unrecorded itself enhances its value.

Near time. Unrecorded.