“Tools that are designed to make intelligible something alive, the life of the network.” Interview of Hugues AUBIN, ICT Project Manager, City of Rennes (France)
Hugues Aubin: I must admit that I avoided this moment for as long as I could. I had no desire to physically meet the people with whom I had been involved in Second Life. But then, time got the best of me, and I ended up meeting about sixty of them. All I can say is that these interfaces are very demanding and time-consuming, which is both an asset and a drawback. They tend to be invasive. In real-time, people are side-by-side, and they don’t benefit from the snug simultaneity granted by Facebook statuses. As a result, they are forced to spend time together. To me, the ties interwoven are made from the same stuff as those between people who have talked for a long while; they are real. There can be no digital relationship without a video chat or real-time voice chat to summon real-life conditions. Thanks to this type of interface, you can communicate with remote acquaintances, and build time rituals. I’ve noticed that Twitter enables communication in a real-time flow. In the morning, at breakfast, you say “hello” and “good-bye” to the same people, and at times, new faces appear. This daily bonding overcomes the feeling of talking to strangers whose face you’ve never seen. This also applies to all networks featuring functions designed for people to bond for a certain time or over a certain project. Second Life is slightly different: Users actually own a 3D avatar that spurs their peers to try and spot physical resemblances, distinguishing marks, and sometimes, to no avail. The same trend can be observed on Twitter. You strike up a strong connection in a physical- or digital-hybrid social continuum, and this type of relationship has become very effective. Going back and forth between physical and digital continuums considerably strengthens the bonds while intertwining the upsides of both. I think the same thing happens on real-time or asynchronous 2D platforms where users can spend quality time together. Indeed, when you spend time with someone, even via long-distance video chat, more emotion and memory spoors are generated, and the desire to experience things together is increased. Thus, as lifestream-based platforms keep developing, much shared emotion is spawned at a particular time on a similar attention catcher. Applying these technologies to cultural events so that participants share a continuum of experience and emotion regardless of whether they are on-site or physically remote. Without a doubt, the interwoven links prove resilient, and are reinforced by a back-and-forth motion between physical and digital worlds. Even though three-dimensional platforms feature other assets, these links can be contrived via mobile phone or 140 characters.
The paradox of user-generated content
Grégoire Cliquet: Let’s further our discussion on your take regarding user-generated content, about the ongoing craze for the 2.0 web. Would you say we are living in times of digital exposure? Do we not feel obligated to produce more and more content, to leave more and more spoors behind? Isn’t the current situation twofold in that users want to leave as much of themselves as they can online while they move about in a people-tracking system? Having witnessed the Web’s gradual evolution, how do you perceive it? Do you think borders between private and public space are beginning to crumble?
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