The girls, the boys and the perverts

Chatroulette has been all over the media lately and has caused everything from awe to disgust and back. I haven’t tried it just yet myself, but I’ll probably join the squadrons of those trying it out sometime soon. I stumbled across this lovely documentary by Casey Neistat on Andy’s blog, which might shed some light on the chatroulette-enon if you haven’t checked it out yourself. Casey spends a day using Chatroulette with 90 people and does a brief analysis of who they are and how they behave with him and his pretty female co-experimenter.

In principle, apart from its perv content and time wasting potential, Chatroulette seems like an interesting way of opening an extra channel of chance to meeting those you would probably never come across in your life. If you want a broader read about Chatroulette, head over to the as usual highly interesting blog posts at Danah Boyd’s blog.

Public-centered design (please!)

I’m from time to time thoroughly startled and unimpressed by how public services and businesses work around time. Businesses and public services exist by getting money out of the public. In other words, the public (yes, we), pay their wages and allow them to exist. The question I have is then this: why don’t public services in particular serve the public in times of day that are more appropriate for the public? How is it meant to be agreeable to not be able to see a doctor or register at a GP in the UK without having to take off work? Seriously, something is way off here.

I can let go of why businesses work 9-5, it is their decision about when and how much money they want to make and what kind of customer relationships they want to build. Nevertheless, I don’t quite understand why they stick to their working hours as they do – opening your shop for longer or different hours would give you a better competitive edge over other businesses and possibly make your customers happier. Businesses already ‘get it’ in the south of Europe – it’s nothing unusual to find shops open at 2pm and closing at 10pm. To sum it up, later opening hours could bring businesses:

1. higher income
2. better customer loyalty
3. better competitive edge

Any thoughts? Is it too much to expect people who want to profit from me to let me give them money when I choose to? Or having public services available when the public is?

Days with My Father

Phillip Toledano has created a journal of experiences he’s gone through during the 3 years of his father’s deterioration and final passing. The simplicity of a child-parent love, the rediscovery of the real person within a parent and finally the sheer fear and suffering that lies in losing them all interwind in this heartbreaking series of  moments so fragile captured so well. Thank you, Phillip.

And thank you showing me this, Lenny.

More is more

I like to apply the rule of ‘less is more’ in many aspects of my life, but I can’t help noticing that every day takes us deeper and deeper into a world where ‘more is more’. The perpetual stimulation and, as some may call it, distraction, leaves us with so many things zipping through our minds per day, per hour, even minute that a commitment to a single task seems far from possible for most (Did you not just get a Twitter notification, email, text, phone call?). According to Virgin mobile, 1 in 5 people will interrupt sex to answer a phone call. Most sleep with their phones constantly on and those with smartphones will often check their email before getting out of bed in the morning, with 6 in 10 Blackberry users checking their email in bed on a regular basis. Furthermore, ‘four out of 10 said they kept them nearby as they slept so they could hear incoming mail. A similar proportion said they had replied to emails in the middle of the night. A further 37% responded to emails when they were driving.’

Digital and in particular social media has enabled many phenomenal communication channels as a result of which we seem, and I believe are, better connected both across borders and with our real close social networks. I don’t believe that the nature of human relationships has changed due to the Internet, I believe it has merely enriched our relationships and given us more freedom and choice in how we develop and maintain them. The only possible problem this richness may cause to human relationships is the fact that today we probably deal with more relationships at a time than ever before which leaves less room for each of them. One could claim that our relationships have thus become more shallow, but again, that is a grand generalisation and a personal choice that people can make by themselves. What digital has given us is merely more choices in how we interact with our environments. 

Oh, the choices we, and our children will have to make. How many friends will you manage to talk to this week? Will you call your parents? Will you catch up on you favorite blogs by the end of the week or spend time outdoors instead? Which information and with what restrictions will you put on you Twitter, Fb, whatnot? These are just a few of the decisions to make for most of those engaged in digital. The distraction or rather multi-tasking might not be a bad thing; it might make our minds more flexible and thus capable of processing more information at a time allowing us a greater capacity of experiences within a given unit of time. The neurological changes might make us into a different kind of a human over the next generations, which is a part of evolution, whether in the right or not direction. 

So yes, more is more, but the trick within all of this possibility is not to spread your experience, your life, too thinly. The world of the increasingly ubiquitous more requires more discipline both in our daily behaviour and attention. The small choices every day can be driven by the same logic as paying attention to how to deposit of your recycling – everything mixed together might just not be the best option. Where you start is another question, perhaps not checking your email at night and getting some sleep instead could be one of them. 

For related articles, please read:

Benefits of Distraction at NYT

Rules for balancing technology and relationships at Timesviou

Illustration by Glen Cummings/MTWTF  

(Photo: John Day/Getty Images)

6 billion Others

It periodically blows my mind to realise how deeply similar everyone is and to what degree we all seek the same in our lives, our days, our occupations, friends and lovers. The one coherent mass that seems to disagree with the idea for the sake of being textured; a swarm of fish, combination of seeds spilled on the ground, the racing microbes in our bodies.

Fifty People One Question is a project that started with a simple idea. ‘ ‘Go to a place. Ask fifty people the same question. Film their responses.’ Created by Crush & Lovely, a creative studio based in New York City and San Francisco and Deltree, a New Orleans-based production company led by Benjamin Reece, a talented young director and creator of the original ‘Fifty People, One Question’ video. So far a collection of just four videos available on Vimeo take you to New York, New Orleans and London and reflect the filmed communities by asking them two simple yet meaningful questions about their lives and dreams.

Another project, though of a larger scale is 6 billion Others by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, which attempts to draw a portrait of mankind by asking meaningful questions to people around the globe. With 4,500 hours of footage filmed by 6,000 interviewees in 65 different countries, 6 billion Others is largely available to online with altogether 450 hours of translated and subtitled footage.

Nowadays we’re surrounded by amazing communication tools, you can see everything, know everything, and the sheer bulk of information out there has never been so huge. What’s ironic in that in reality we know so little about our actual neighbors. The only way we can move forward is to move towards are fellow men.

Cause a scene

Improv Everywhere is an urban prankster network which causes scenes or flashmobs crowds in cities around the world. One of their latest ‘missions’ was the No Pants 2k9 day organised across 22 cities. The group has spread over to blogs and Facebook as well with their Improv Everywhere page and multiple country-specific groups that try to keep participants up to date with what’s going on.

On Saturday, January 10th, 2009 nearly 2,500 took off their pants on subways in 22 cities around the world. In New York’s 8th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride we had over 1,200 participants, spread over four subway lines.

One of the more interesting ‘missions’ coming up in London is the Urban Desert Island Shipwreck, which will consitute of a few agents being dropped off on an pond island. They’ll be wearing ragged clothes on and showing consequences of a 2-week stay full of hunger and misery setting in. The scenario so far involves a plane crash, a rescue mission and family reunions.

Reborn

Reborn dolls are remarkably human-like looking dolls collected by older and often childless women who treat them as normal infants. Reborns are often dressed, changed, taken out and even have birthday parties thrown for them. This reminds me a bit of cases of dog obsession among older ladies, though compared with Reborns, those ladies are at least interacting with live creatures. This may be creepy and sad, but perhaps it should be seen as just a form of therapy for these childless women. From a medical point of view, holding a child can trigger hormone releases, which in turn can lead to a better well-being.

People around the world create substitutive relationships with pets and mostly this is not seen as out bounds with social standards. Couples sometimes experiment with parenting through having pets and if they decide to remain childless or cannot conceive, they sometimes create substitutive bonds with their pets. Such relationships can be therapeutic in cases of dealing with death in family, keeping elderly relatives more occupied in day-to-day activities or treating disabilities. Such behavior is also seen in children, who mostly create extremely strong bonds with their pets and toys. People often talk to their pets and spend considerable amounts of time with them through leisure activities as well as spending money on their food and accessories. Are the Reborns that much different beyond representing the obvious missing connection with a real child for their owners?

Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project created by Frank Warren in which people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. You can find both funny and horrifying secrets, but all are meant to be true and revealed for the first time. Since 2004 the blog has accumulated over 200.000 secrets and has recently won the MySpace Impact Award worth $10.000 that was subsequently donated to the HopeLine 1(800) – SUICIDE.

The project has created a hub of anonymous confession and a place where people can find themselves less alone with their secrets. PostSecret has supported those depressed and troubled through providing a meaningful outlet of emotional distress and allowing the audience to give support to those sending the secrets. The postcards are not only an artform, but also a way for people to let go of their secrets in a symbolic way through allowing their secrets to be seen by those who handle their cards, PostSecret staff and finally those who see them online. PostSecret has published 4 books, which so far are the only way the project supports itself financially.

Time Poverty

Across the world societies are getting more affluent, but end up paying for it in other ways. In most developed countries, the numbers of hours worked keeps rising while those spent on leisure are on the fall. Every year millions of people end up not taking all the holidays they earn and thus return some of their earnings to the employers. The concept of time poverty is by no means a new one, but it seems that it is increasingly relevant across developed and underdeveloped societies. The concept of time poverty boils down to indivuals not having enough time for rest and leisure once they spend the required time in the labour market, on domestic work and for other basic activities such as shopping or commuting.

This is a recent study from the Economist:

Historically our efficiency is actually on the increase – the amount of energy and resources used to complete activities or produce things is drastically lower in the developed parts of the world than it used to be decades ago especially considering the digital advancements in communications and the hyper-efficient mass production of items. In countries that haven’t gone through industrial revolutions one can see how much the working force efficiency is lagging behind – to look at Africa, its poverty, lack of sanitation and health problems are some of the major consequences of its lack of infrastructures taken for granted in the developed world. As an example, fetching water in some African villages may take several hours and many of its diseases are preventable with simple measures that come with adequate sanitation.

Unlike consumption or income, time is a strictly limited resource and one that we just can’t get more of in our lives. The problem of ‘not enough hours in the day’ seems to apply to more and more people these days. So what are the major reasons for the increasing time poverty in the developed societies? Apart from people just working long hours, one can also account increasing commuting distances. Commuting is related to a lot of factors, but mostly to housing prices and urban sprawl. Consequently, across the world people waste more of their time, fuel and money due to commuting. We suffer because of the time taken out of our days and make the environment suffer from the pollution we produce while getting to work and then getting home. Considering how much work can be done over the Internet, I believe employers should drastically cut down on the required amount of hours in normal offices. This would hopefully be a win-win solution giving employees more time for leisure, family time and learning and eventually allowing businesses to scale down on their property expenses and energy usage.

The single-click brides

I remember having to write an essay on women’s role in Russian literature a few years back in college. Naturally, the first thing I did was a Google search. Instead of typing in ‘women Russian literature’, I typed ‘women Russia’ and got pretty much the same results as can you get today: among the 11 sites displayed on the first page sadly 8 are dating and marriage arranging sites with quotes such as ‘If you’re genuine about acquiring your merry hot lady, you must to lead our executive personals service’ and ‘Hundreds of new East European brides every week’. One of the sites claims their ladies as ‘unspoiIt by femnism’ and once married, devoted to their husbands. I’ve tried to come up with ways to understand the women who sign up for these services and I guess in case of Russia you can consider the following:

- Russia is supposed to have quite a bad men to women ratio – estimates vary, but most say that there are roughly 10 million women more than men. This is largely due to Russia’s military duty and its harsh conditions as well as Russia’s problems with alcohol consumption among males.

- It is difficult for Russians to immigrate to the West due to visa restrictions and the poor economic equality, which leaves most of Russian citizens less able to travel or study.

Fair enough, sort of. So then I got curious about what other countries may engage in this type of services and just looking at Europe, it’s hard to find a country in the east and south of Europe that doesn’t have mail order brides sites. What baffles me is that a decent percentage of these women are university-level educated and are by no means unattractive. They also have no immigration restrictions so long as they are willing to move only within the EU, learn a language, and well, work. So how do the realities of this business look? Is it a perfectly symbiotic solution between the young-women-hungry, wealthy westerners and the somewhat naive and reluctant to work for themselves girls in the somewhat-less-developed countries?

This one is with graduate education and interested in men 18-55 years old (from a site called Dream Marriage). I also wonder what apart from the apparent desire to sleep with and to some degree possess a younger attractive female drives these males to such relationships? Are they not effectively the very same kind of men who hand over sums of money to get sex in return?

Perhaps some of these relationships do work, but I cannot imagine to what degree. Some, if not most of these women aren’t proficient in English, but for a promise of a secure lifestyle with a male they hardly know, they are willing to leave their friends and families behind for a Western destination. In principle, like I said, it looks like a victimless deal, but do these women effectively not just sell themselves? Is this not really just a little more delicate form of human trafficking? If so, shouldn’t something be done about these sites?