Melody on “Third Places”

My thoughts on the article are captured in my blog and also pasted below for convenience.

Oldenburg’s 1997 article “Our Vanishing Third Places” is an interesting take on the function of public space, especially as seen through the lens of the pre-social media era. In it, Oldenburg coined the term “third places” by considering the home as the universal “first place” and the workplace as a “second place.” “Third places,” he wrote, “lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. [They] are nothing more than informal public gathering places.”

The article predates Facebook and the slew of social “spaces” that have emerged across the internet over the past decade. These digital third places fill some of the needs Oldenburg describes throughout the article — perhaps most notably, the need of meeting points for people who share special interests. As Oldenburg harkened back to historic third places like colonial taverns, candy stores, soda fountains and beyond, it became clear that social media filled this need in a unique, unprecedented and important way. It expanded the “local” to what Marshall McLuhan aptly predicted would become a global village, fostering all kinds of new connections between people with interests, lifestyles, needs, identities that could not have been accommodated in a corner store. It continues to mobilize these people, giving them the gifts of like-minded communities, a platform for sharing their stories, a network of support, and in some cases, a reminder that it gets better.

While this is all fine and dandy, it’s worth nothing that these digital third places don’t completely fulfill Oldenburg’s vision. Many have argued that the lack of physical co-presence is a veiled sort of isolationism, Facebook is commonly critiqued as making the notion of friendship superficial and facilitating idealized presentations of life thatmakes people sad.

With the advent of wearables, interactive installations and other kinds of ubiquitous computing, technology is trending in a direction where digital and physical boundaries are more blurred. In the context of public spaces, the emerging question seems to become: How can the digital complement or enhance our experience of the physical third place?