I have an ambivalent relationship with my cell-phone. I cancelled my "land line" a few years ago, without regret. But currently I prefer the simplest, least committed type of relationship with the my cell phone carrier-- a "prepaid" account -- analogous to living together as opposed to being married. I pay by the minute, from the moment a connection is made. Needless to say, I try to avoid making unnecessary calls -- let alone unintentional ones.
How can one be surprised at having initiated an outgoing call? It is very easy to do on my phone, due to what seems to me to be a design flaw in the placement of the keys. The keys are so small that I often find myself pressing the adjacent key rather than the one that I intend. The red key is used for hanging up a call and for turning off the unit. I sometimes accidentally hit the #3 key which is right below it. One function of key #3 is for speed-dialing. So sometimes, after thinking I have turned my phone off, I have heard a tiny little mystified "hello?" coming from my pocket.
This has proven embarrassing as well as expensive. I partially fixed the problem by getting into the habit of immediately changing the speed dial assignment of any new entry to my phone book from #3 to something else. That works fine, except that my phone just cannot leave that #3 slot empty, and automatically tries to assign it again the next time.
I've just come up with a solution which I think is fairly elegant -- I assigned the #3 as the speed dial for my cell phone company's customer service line. The only free calls I can make are to them. And since this company also provided my poorly designed phone, I think it is fitting that my accidental calls are now going out to "Andrea", their automated robot voice. I smile when I hear that tinny little voice calling out of my pocket to tell me "Your call is important to us!" She can't even make any money for her company out of my mistake!
Good news! Computer Shutdown Day is a "go" for this year, though this year it will be later in the spring -- sometime in May. They are taking the time to build the event without burning themselves out! I'll pass the date information on when I see the announcement.
In the meantime, the stirring of this year's activity is like a bear coming out of hibernation. I found to my delight when I looked there that the event began here in Canada. The organizer Denis Bystrov is from Montreal. Together with another Montrealer, Ashutosh Rajeka, he has expanded upon last year's success and registered as a Quebec non-profit society to promote the theme of finding a more balanced life. Both career software developers, they describe themselves as "first hand victims of excessive use of computer related technology". So there is a lot of common ground between the issues that I look at here and those being addressed by events like this.
I plan to do a small video about my experience with last year's event. So stay tuned!
In the meantime, here again is the very funny video they made to introduce the concept for the first Shutdown Day, last year. It is called "Alternate Uses for Your Laptop".
In my last posting I stated my intention that I would try to be one of the ones to show up when the call went out for people to get out of their houses and do harmless goofy things in public spaces. I have been monitoring The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) website for their next call to action. The idea for an event called "Pirates of the Seabus" was proposed, but then the expectation was for interested people like me to pass the word through our own groups. I asked four friends, but none of whom could make it. By the time Friday evening came, my energy was low, and I was on the verge of changing my mind. But my friend Juan, equally tired, had managed to get through his equally busy day and he still intended to get there. He was motivated by the fun he'd had at the Halloween Party on the Skytrain, and it had been his enthusiasm that made me so curious. As soon as I got into the atmosphere I got energized. I am practicing my pirate's "Arrrgh" with him in the final frame of the video below.
This blog's theme is about the issues that arise when seniors get stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. So how does my participation in a flash mob fit in? I see two points of connection.
One of my fears, as a COABC, is about the possibility of social isolation for those who use computers extensively. I worry that online social networking might become a substitute for face-to-face encounters. But my fellow pirates, on the basis of information spread as a Facebook event, enthusiastically launched themselves off on an adventure in the real world. They played with identity using real, cheesy costumes, and interacted face-to-face with strangers. Here, I've seen a concrete example of how Internet based social networking can connect people into "First Life" (as opposed to "Second Life"). A key element in the success was spontaneity and low barriers to participation. Being tired at the end of the day is enough of an inhibitor! The timely spreading of the news needed instant, easy communication to make it worth our while.
A second COABC reflection upon my participation in this event is about my surprise today in finding that, as of the time I'm writing this, my video is the first photographic material to be uploaded to the VPSN Facebook site. I tend to assume that I am the least tech-savvy person in a group -"ten thumbs" technologically. But after my time as a media student, I am seeing that I have gained hard-won technical skills that might be setting me apart from other people who came of age before computers. I not only took a gig worth of material on my digital camera, but had facility in using it -- for example, switching to recording sound using the "sound memo" function when I didn't have enough memory for any more movies. In one of my classes last term, I was one of the few who passed the Apple Certification exam for level one in Final Cut Pro, the industry standard for editing movies on computers. I now am teaching seniors how to use digital cameras, and am getting quite good at helping them move from mystification into confidence.
Last night I put together the little movie you see above, and then uploaded it to YouTube and FaceBook and here on my blog. Since I had other commitments in the four days since the Pirate event, I was sure that I was going to be so late in contributing my material that everyone would yawn and say "been there, done that". People might still yawn, but it will be from boredom, not competition. To my surprise, not only have I produced a pretty okay movie, but I'm ahead of the crowd. Go figger!
Two postings here back in March and April 2007 recorded my excitement at the Internet-based Shutdown Day on March 24, 2007. A site encouraged people to turn off their computers, and do something else, just to see what it felt like. More than 50,000 people responded. My second article in April, entitled "Shutdown Day - the Day After" expressed disappointment that the majority of people reported that they "sex" and "computer use" as what they had done (sometimes in combination). Even at the time, I recognized that it might be a "generational thing" on my part to be so surprised. I myself had spent the day with a friend participating in a haiku writing contest. I've been checking the official site periodically and have been googling around, without finding activity yet on Shutdown Day 2008. I now am asking myself -- why does it need to happen again? Isn't it okay that it happened once, and that I had a day that got me thinking?
On Shutdown day there had been simultaneous flash mob pillow fights in a number of cities, including Vancouver. With very little lead time, a word-of-mouth announcement went out, boosted by emails, cell phones and messaging, inviting people to drop what they were doing and show up with concealed pillows. Although nobody called ME, the following video taken on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery shows a very engaging alternative activity to being hunched over a computer. Two viral events in the same spirit on the same day. Coincidence? I think not. Repeatable? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm starting to get it that the nature of a viral event is that it gets set in motion, and then it is what it is.
And now I am intrigued -- a flash mob wannabe, waiting for my first opportunity to check it out. Since last year I've become much more comfortable about both the short lead-up and quick wind-down of viral events. In fact, I've joined a Facebook group called "Flash Mob Vancouver". I am now poised to leap into that loop, and to be ready to pocket my palm pilot and go show up. Whether or not the Shutdown Day website fires up again and gives me a place to report, I can move on and apply that experience towards another step. I'm ready and waiting to shut down my computer and show up for the next "international day of fluff" -- 2008 World Wide Pillow Fight Club 3.0. And I'll report here.
The following video, an ironic take on the song "My Generation" by the Who, is a music video initiated by the BBC in late May, 2007. It arose from participation by Peter (aka Geriatric1927) in programming about giving elders opportunity to have a voice in popular culture. A group of elders came together as "The Zimmer Band" and recorded in Abbey Road studios with production staff with excellent credentials in making pop music videos. The result is an energetic and effective piece of culture jamming.
Wikipedia defines Culture jamming as "the act of transforming mass media to produce commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the "detournement" of pop iconography." In another section Wikipedia explains that in "detournement", an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. "
Peter's culture jamming last spring in the widely marketed "My Generation" was the vehicle for public activism and fundraising around issues arising from social isolation among the elderly. The skillful music video used the obvious energy and physicality of the grooving seniors to make points against the stereotypes of rigidity and stuffiness.
In the video below "Now the Secret Can Be Told" he explains to the YouTube community about his relationship to the media and about the making the video. He makes no bones that this is a promotional clip looking for support for his activity which now is moving to a larger audience through broadcast television, mainstream music distribution and live performances. For him, Zimmers is serious play, engaging his creativity and fun with the band members, but with a social agenda reminiscent of the charity work of Bob Geldof with his concerts like "Band Aid" .
As uplifting as "My Generation" is, there is also an angry edge to the video where gesture and home-made signs get the simple message across. The "Culture Jamming" article in Wikipedia goes on to note that the "... intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art's sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable." The ritualistic smashing up of guitars at the end of "Generation", as directed by seasoned producers of other high-profile rock music videos is an appropriation of cultural cliches in order to comment on stereotypes of the elderly as inhibited and passive.
It seems that the experience recording at Abbey Road studios was a positive one. But once the band went on the promotional road, and were being examined by people who were not necessarily in the socially-engaged loop, were individual members at risk of being set up to be stereotyped in an even more negative way? Culture jamming has its roots in an idealistic desire to promote change, and so I make the assumption of a degree of innocence. "The Zimmers Backstage at Graham Norton" (a live talk show) leaves me wondering if the exuberance of the band members was getting exploited by the host, who seemed to be directing them into crossing the line into vandalism, for the sake of cheap laughs. Intitially I found his comments seemed responsive to the detournment they had initiated themselves. For example, he comments that their combined age of 3000 is just short of the Rolling Stones. But as the segment progressed, when he seems to hook into the underlying frustration that was also in the music video, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with his mocking "us/them" asides to his audience.
However, would I have been patronizing too, if I could have intervened to protect Grace, the woman that he described as "you with the purply lilac top thing" from actually went for it beyond what seems to have been the host's intention, in trashing the backstage as he had directed? Where do my own stereotypes come in? I myself have been warned that if I leave the safety of dignified gestures when I appear in my own videos, I will be leaving myself open to ridicule and embarrassment. The fear of inadvertantly crossing the lines in a new setting is a powerful inhibitor to anyone. It has really slowed me down in putting myself out there on the Internet. I'd love to get some comments on the topic of taking these kinds of risks.
In the sidebar on the right I have an earlier link to the work of "Geriatric1927" in the "YouTube videos for COABC's" section. That is the online name of Peter, an eighty-year old British senior whose channel, with over two million views, has earned him a place in the top twenty "Most Subscribed Directors of All Time". He talks about his own experience as an elder. He once said that he disapproves of people masking their identity on the Internet, so he used his birth year as part of his online name to ensure that his age would be crystal clear to young people interacting with him. Since I subscribed to him last year, he has increasingly focused in upon "intergenerational communication", and also upon the potential of the Internet to address mobility and isolation issues for his demographic.
This month he posted the video "Help for the Elderly", which he describes as: "A request for help in my attempt to introduce and encourage those elderly people who may be lonely and/or parted from their families to embrace the Internet and to reap the benefits even though they may be confused and frightened of all of the technologies". This week, he has started the blog Silver Surfers and made it the home page of his "Ask Geriatric" website.
One of the video responses is from Ben Arent, a product design student who is doing his final project upon this theme. He notes that this subject is "quite a current thing" and that there has been a recent new European Union directive, with a 43 million euro budget, about including the elderly in the information society. After Ben looked at my posting, he left a comment with the EU official website address "i2010" . A further google search found a central "thematic portal" site about the launch of the Europe-wide "Aging Well in the Information Society" research initiative. On that one, the amount quoted is a billion Euros.
No doubt part of Ben's motivation is social engagement, but he also sees an opportunity for himself in launching his professional career as a designer. He is planning a "social communication" product focused mainly on making email easier. In the video below he explains his design framework. He visualizes "negating the pain of adoption", then "imprinting" by marketing to this "undermarketed group" and "inciting" their engagement with his product. Here is a link to his website "Arent"
I'll be monitoring to see how this initiative unfolds.
The rise of cell phones seems to be bringing about the fall of phone booths. The above 3-minute video "Disappeared Phone Booths" was inspired by a real incident of my life, when the Dean's Food Store pay phone, a few minutes walk from my house, was removed by the phone company instead of being repaired. I found that I was not the only person in my neighbourhood that missed it. This loss stimulated thought about the quiet reduction of the number of accessible phone booths throughout my daily travels, and I decided to do a playful video piece about my desire for rescue from this trend and post it to YouTube.
As you might be able to tell by my previous postings, vanishing pay phones are an accessibility issue. During my online research I felt validated in this interest when I found The Payphone Project, a website devoted to that subject. It is moderated by Mark Thomas, a New York photographer.
The message of this site has not always been one of a call to social action towards resisting a change. He began it as an art project publishing the telephone numbers of pay phones around the world. The idea was random conversations: one could dial a telephone booth in some distant corner of the world, with the hope that somebody passing by would answer the ringing phone. There are now few phones that are still set to accept incoming calls, possibly as a deterrent to the percieved use of pay phones for "off the radar" activity. But in the meantime Mark had gotten interested in the overall meaning and "look" of pay phones, and in how they are increasingly becoming a scarce resource for people who still want to use them. He is now observing the worldwide progression of this disappearance, and is collecting news stories and photos from around the world. He invites interested people to send material or links, so there is a community aspect to this essentially personal site.
I think this site is a good example of how a single person can sponsor a nexus for opinion on the Internet and, through the investment of time and effort, foster a resonating response regarding a subject of personal passion. Through forums like exhibitions, artists frequently put their creative activity out for public view without any guarantee of payoff, other than a possible gratification at being given attention. Thanks to user-friendly self-publishing umbrella sites on the Internet (such as Blogger and Youtube), an individual does not need to be granted the status of "professional" in order to self-publish text, photos and videos.
Recognizing that the essential payoff for the person doing a posting is the sense of being seen and heard, most distribution sites show information about how many "views" were made and usually provide an opportunity to open a posting to comments and rankings. There are simple software tools that can be embedded in a blog or website to give genera source information about the "hits".
In the above one-minute video, my friend Cole tells the story of looking for a phone booth downtown. She brings up the issues that arise for those who aren't using cell phones, when pay phones are disappearing. She sees this as a safety issue as well as one of convenience. Many seniors resist using a cell phone because they have a high learning curve, the small keys are difficult to operate with fingers that aren't so nimble any more, and eyes that aren't so keen. Cell phone resisters of all ages explain that they are tired of being surprised by dead batteries and accounts that need refilling.
Cole says that Bob Dylan should launch a new protest song called "Where have all the phonebooths gone?". Is access to a public phone a civil right?
