Let's get this out of the way--I wrote this using my iPad.
Much like my Apple-centric mobile email signatures, (
Sent from my iPhone,
Sent from my iPad), my life is being tagged on a regular basis. I can send tweets from Twitter's official iPhone app, from Twitterific or HelTweetica on my iPad, from Echofon on my Mac, and from the increasingly mundane Twitter website while at work, as I die a slow death on the Dell they force on me. And you'll know where I sent them from (
via Twitter for iPhone,
via Twitterific,
via Echofon, etc.) Also embedded in those tweets are my GPS coordinates, a feature that I've enabled twice and disabled once, and am leaning towards disabling again.
I am a Foursquare user. I check-in, or attempt to check-in, everywhere I go. I'm the "mayor" of three different locations and I've got a bunch of badges.
I tag myself, and others, in pictures--on Facebook, on Flickr, and on my MobileMe galleries.
So it actually makes sense that I'm tagging this post, too. It's the latest in literal, and figurative, technological tags. 21st century designer labels, if you will.
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Robert Putnam is a political scientist who did a study in Italy of the connection between strong civic traditions and community networks and the ability for the local government to function efficiently. The study was so successful that he decided to try something similar in the United States, to see if "the civic traditions and local social and political networks were growing weaker and if the social structure in the United States was consequently becoming more like the ineffective local government in Italy (87)."
Regarding Putnam's book, "Bowling Alone," is the following from "Sociology For A New Century":
Putnam has tried to measure the decline of interaction in the United States, explore its implications, and trace its causes. He has presented an impressive collection of evidence demonstrating that, since the 1960's, there have been dramatic declines in the membership of groups of all kinds (PTA, the Girl Scouts, labor unions, the Red Cross, the Lions Club, even bowling leagues) and in many forms of civic engagement (voting, attending political rallies, volunteering for community groups). He believes that the decline in civic involvement has had negative consequences for American culture, attitudes, and behavior patterns. As people in the United States have become more isolated and socially disconnected, they have become less trusting and more suspicious and cynical. As participation in civic and group life declines, society is losing its ability to solve problems, meet common needs, and deal effectively with crises.
Putnam's study uncovered some of the following evidence:
• Membership rosters in organizations as diverse as the Elks, the PTA, and the Red Cross show declines of 25% to 50% since the 1960s.
• Time budgets, in which all activities over a single day were recorded by ordinary Americans in 1965, 1975, and 1985, indicate that the time spent on informal socializing and visiting is down by as much as 25%. Furthermore, time devoted to clubs and organizations has declined by as much as 50% over the period.
• Participation in collective political events (attending a rally or a speech or working for a political party) is off between 33% to 56% since the 1960's.
• National public opinion surveys show a drop of about 25% in membership in all sorts of groups, ranging from sports clubs to labor unions, since 1974. Church attendance is also down, perhaps by as much as 30%, since the 1960s.
• National surveys also show that the extent to which people say that other people can be trusted has dropped by roughly 33% since 1972 (93).
Basically, America is becoming isolated, withdrawn, and paranoid, at least that's what the data (admittedly now almost 20-year-old data) seems to indicate.
So how does this relate to the notion of "Sent from my iPad?"
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I was having a conversation recently with a friend (the "how" will come into play later) about the iPad. When asked how I liked it so far, I gave my standard initial reply--that it's an amazing first step towards being the game changer that I think it will eventually be, but certainly not perfect. The friend, L, a female, said that she had recently been debating the iPad with someone. The crux of her argument was that multi-tasking (in the sense of having a device that puts everything in front of you, makes everything so accessible) is destroying society.
It's funny--for a generation raised on/with technology, we've got a surprising number of Luddites in the bunch--people who don't see the appeal or benefit of apps, people who don't know how to sort data on an Excel spreadsheet, people who don't know the difference between POP e-mail and IMAP. For me, we've reached a point where that type of knowledge isn't indicative of technological geekiness; it's part of a skill set required to stand out in the job market.
L went on to ask, "As a writer and a lover of books and the written word, how do you feel about the electronic medium for reading books?" I told her that I was hopeful, but hesitant and that I enjoyed my initial iBooks experience, even more than I had when using a Kindle or a Nook. And that technologically speaking, the iPad fulfilled my request that it improve the previous method, since I could now read in the dark, something the Kindle or Nook can't achieve. More specifically, I said, "I can't read a "real" book in the dark."
L replied, "Pretty soon the word book will have quotations around it," and this is where I have to divulge that we were having this conversation via Gchat, Gmail's built-in chat client. So really, L's response looked like this:
L: omg...pretty soon the word book will have "" around it.. :(
And that's where I began to develop what would become the foundation of this piece.
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me: well, no i mean, that's my point--what makes something "real"
When I sent this to L, what I was getting at is: how do we define what makes a book, a book. Is it the pages and the ink and the binding? Or is it the content, the author, the way a tangible grouping of words has the ability to transport and teach? Perspective also dominates the viewpoint. Those who support a woman's right to choose an abortion call themselves
Pro-Choice and those who oppose them
Anti-Choice. Those who support banning abortion, or at the very least, making it a difficult option to choose, refer to themselves as
Pro-Life and those who oppose them
Anti-Life. The politics, in this instance, don't really matter. It's the semantics I'm interested in, the fight to understand adaptation. Is it the practice that changes, or just the definition? This would also become a question posed to Robert Putnam.
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While his study seemed to show some alarming trends, some wondered if Putnam's data really backed-up his claims:
• Some criticized how Putnam defined community groups. The YMCA was considered a community group, but private, for-profit gyms were not.
• Some have pointed out that his measurement of civic engagement was limited to only well-established, traditional groups like the PTA or the Lions Club (case-in-point: I’m twenty-five and have no clue what the Lions Club is). Newer groups like neighborhood crime watch programs or Habitat For Humanity and temporary grassroots programs were not considered.
• Another research effort by Robert Wuthnow in 1994 showed that people are still joining groups, but they tend to be small and informal, making them hard to track. He found that about 40% of people belong to some type of support group, most being religion-themed (Bible study) but a large number are self-help groups that deal with addiction and special interest groups like book and music clubs.
• Everett Ladd argues that while the PTA has seen a drop in involvement, it can be accounted for by the development of new groups with similar goals, like Parent Activity Clubs and Parent Councils.
Then there was a survey done by Witte and Howard in 1999, which looked at the rise of groups in cyberspace. The terminology used indicates just how dated this information is (this is before Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, etc.), but what is important is this:
(The) findings suggest that cyberspace is not populated by asocial, alienated isolates but rather by "digital citizens" who are finding new ways of forging community and connecting with others.
11 years later, and I think it might be time to revisit this notion.
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me: that's the other thing too, and i feel like you can appreciate this train of thought--
i love the debate that the iPad has set off
i can't remember the last time technology garnered such public-wide debate
maybe when the prius was initally introduced
L: i LOVE IT!!! haha... i love a spirited debate with two strong sides.
yeah.
the alternative fuel cars was a big debate for a while.
me: and that's what's ironic to me--some people becry technology for eliminating the "town square" aspect of society
but I think it's quite the opposite
L: please elaborate
because im on that side of the fence
me: the townsquare is very much alive--it's just adapted
L did not receive your chat.
L: sorry i got kicked off
me: s'ok--yeah, to me the townsquare is very much alive--it's just adapted to the 21st century
it goes back to the "real" argument--the townsquare is only evaporating if you refuse to update the definition of the townsqaure
it used to be when you talked to someone on AOL, you said you im'ed them
and then the AIM program became more popular and you said you talked to them on aim, and at the same type, skype started to show up
and all of these different online messaging programs
jabber, msn, chat rooms
now twitter and facebook chat and gchat
and you already start to see, i'm one of the converts--i just call it talking now
because this is how I talk to people--and frankly, it allows me to talk to more people more frequently, people who don't live near me or in the same time zone
L: excellent point
me: my townsquare exists over thousands of miles at any time of the day--with both friends and strangers
(this is turning into a blog post--thanks, L!)
I was going to sum this exchange up, edit it a bit, present it in a more "literate" form, but as this piece progressed, it become clear that I needed to include the source material, warts and all, because integration and acceptance is the key to what I'm describing above.
They naysayers may point out the grammatical mistakes, the misspellings, and the Internet lingo. But I would point out that in many ways, "e-talking" has taken many strides towards forming not only a vernacular, but a set of manners and customs:
• I use "--" and L uses "..." to indicate a dramatic pause, or that more is coming, understanding that what we've just sent might need a second to process.
• When I get the message that L did not receive my chat, she comes back a minute later and apologizes for it. She understands that I've got no way of knowing why she left abruptly, and follows standard "e-mores" to insure that I'm not offended.
• My response to her apology? "S'ok." Not only do I acknowledge her apology in a normal, understated way (God bless you/Thank you), I also do it in specific shorthand to make it sound more personable and--real.
That word again. We are obsessed with the notion of origin: real, organic, American-made. But what if the only thing that's real is change? What if, in our constant attempts to control the present, we only serve to lose sight of the effect we can have on the future? Rather than bemoan the passing of the written letter, or the telegraph, or the wired landline telephone, or the cordless landline phone, or the cellular phone, or email, or text messages, or Facebook messages, or tweets, why not plant yourself firmly in the now, and embrace the advancements that have given us a variety of ways to communicate with one another, and by doing so, help to become part of whatever comes next?
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If you see Robert Putnam, tell him that we only communicate less if we refuse to update how we define communicate.
Tell him that our town square is shrinking only if we refuse to acknowledge how much its grown.
Our email addresses, our Twitter names, our Facebook profiles, our Playstation Network avatars, they're all just parts of our persona as digital citizens. No one part is greater than the sum. They are all pieces that fit together to form who we are, singularly and as a society, same as it's ever been. And if we're healthy, then they are changing and evolving on a daily basis.
Robert Putnam may have come to the conclusion that our group memberships and our our civic engagement was declining as our reliance on technology strengthened, but I'm not sure I agree with that. Just as I don't believe that ebooks will ever
fully replace printed paper books, I don't think that Wii Bowling on the same Wi-Fi network will ever completely replace going to your local lane.
As digital citizens, we have the option.
And sometimes we'll choose one, and sometimes we'll choose the other--precisely the type of freedom technology is supposed to provide us with.
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I wrote this on my iPad (typed it, actually, but, oh, shit--you get my point). Used Apple's Pages app, fanboy that I am.
But by the time I was done, I realized that I needed to edit the way I always edit--by printing the damn thing out and marking it up with a pen, picture-in-picture style evidence of what I set out to prove.
:)
More soon.
JS
