{"id":889,"date":"2015-09-13T23:06:37","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T23:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/?p=889"},"modified":"2015-09-13T23:08:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T23:08:31","slug":"being-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/?p=889","title":{"rendered":"Being There"},"content":{"rendered":"
This week is the fourth annual XOXO<\/a> festival in Portland, Oregon. I attended the first two, and I remember the acute and profound feeling that I had finally found my tribe. The feeling that I was surrounded, for the first time, by people who shared my priorities and nerdy interests and goals and experiences and references. They\u2019re my people! People from the internet!<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

XOXO is a strong reminder that our third spaces have hardly evaporated. No, we\u2019re not unsocialized beasts, lost in the meaningless glow of our wretched<\/a> devices. On the contrary \u2014 our needs to socialize are as strong as ever. We\u2019ve just found different ways to satisfy those needs.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The paradox of the public commons is a fascinating one. I think of it every time I\u2019m in an elevator, a Faraday cage with no cell service, yet every single rider is tapping and scrolling meaninglessly on their phones. Oldenburg\u2019s rosy town halls, markets and taverns are often filled with people acting the same way. We have a lot of mediated experiences, and we don\u2019t always look up.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

And yet. When we look down at those devices, we find the richest, most accessible \u201cthird space\u201d in history. Oldenburg\u2019s piece, published twenty years ago, marks a cultural inflection point that is only truly being appreciated now.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

I write often on the importance of physical spaces, and intend to focus my thesis on using technology to facilitate social interaction in the real world. But I\u2019m beginning to more fully appreciate how blurry the lines between the physical and the virtual have become. How our public commons exists not to facilitate relationships between you and the six people who look a lot like you and share your background and sit at your neighborhood watering hole, but instead you and the vastly more diverse audience whose tweets you star and instagram posts you heart.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Oh, for the good Lord’s sake. Thinkpiece writers: People aren’t “hypersensitive” now. We can just HEAR each other better.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Sady Doyle (@sadydoyle) August 18, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

So. I see the acute need Oldenburg speaks of. I see the need to share our spaces, physical and virtual, and the deep need to be better to one another. But I don\u2019t see a dearth of opportunities for connection. On the contrary, I see my public commons on Twitter. I see the \u201ctonic\u201d of \u201cneutral ground\u201d playing out on Metafilter, on Reddit. And I see endless opportunity to bridge these spaces with real-world meetups.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my IxD pecha kucha<\/a>, speaking of desire paths and workarounds, life finds a way<\/a>.\u00a0John Gilmore famously wrote that \u201cthe net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.\u201d I view it as similarly routing around the infrastructural limitations brought on by the suburban sprawl that Oldenburg rightly rejects.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week is the fourth annual XOXO festival in Portland, Oregon. I attended the first two, and I remember the acute and profound feeling that I had finally found my tribe. The feeling that I was surrounded, for the first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3rd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":897,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions\/897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.just4letters.com\/pi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}