Flickr: darquati
Really interesting insights from Sherry Turkle on the opportunity and challenge of our evolving always-on and always-connected lives (if you’d rather read it than watch it, she shares essentially the same message in the New York Times). Paradoxically, she suggests, increasing use of mediated conversation avoids both the depth and nuance of social conversation, and the opportunity and importance of being alone with ourselves. Says she:
We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship. Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.
In many ways, arts organizations (whether place-based or virtual or both) offer opportunities for being alone, being together in conversation, and being together alone observing creative work. How might our work and our organizations both serve preferred behavior — always-on, always-connected, always-elsewhere — and explore and encourage alternate behavior?
