Inter_Act

Being wired helps you connect

2005-11-28T23:25:29+01:00

People who spend time online are not sad, lonely individuals with no social life.

Quite the opposite, argues Professor Keith Hampton, an expert in cyber-sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"The social impact of new communications technologies is a greater number of social ties, more diverse social ties, more support," he said.

"It doesn't cut into your phone communication. It doesn't interfere with your face-to-face contact. It just increases communication," Professor Hampton told the BBC programme, Go Digital.

Binding communities

Various studies have suggested that people who spend time online are more vulnerable to unhappiness and loneliness.

The internet is just another medium that any of us use to communicate with friends and family

Keith Hampton, MIT
One report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggested that even spending an hour a week surfing the internet could increase depression.

But in his research on the relationship between technology, social relationships and the urban environment, Professor Hampton has found that the internet can serve to bind a community together.

"It's all garbage," he said of studies labelling net users as depressed or lonely individuals.

He argues that the key difference between his research and other studies is that he sees the internet as part of people's everyday lives.

"The internet is just another communication medium that any of us use to communicate with friends and family," he said.

"If you look at it as just another technology that provides you with access to people, you see that communication online leads to more communication, in person or on the phone."

Unique neighbourhood

Professor Hampton is a pioneer of cyber-sociology.

For his doctorate, he spent two years as a member of the Netville project, a wired neighbourhood in the suburbs of Toronto.

Professor Keith Hampton of MIT
Hampton: Expert in cyber-sociology
The community was built from the ground up with a high-speed computer network - offering fast internet access - a videophone, an online jukebox, online health services, local discussion forums and entertainment and educational software.

Professor Hampton found that living in a wired community encouraged greater community involvement, strengthened relationships with neighbours and family, and helped maintain ties with friends and relatives living farther away.

"Netville was a unique situation," he said. "It allowed people to form social relationships when they moved in and solve all sorts of problems they encountered when they moved to the new suburban community.

"When you move into a new home, some of the first questions are: where can I find a babysitter, where can I find the best pizzeria? All these questions were answered online with information by existing residents."

Ironically, once the research project was over, the companies that had provided the technology that went into people's homes decided to take it all out.

Faced with the loss of their technology infrastructure, the residents pulled together to replace what they had lost.

"They now all have cable modem access and they have replicated their neighbourhood e-mail list," said Professor Hampton.

"These were the most important technologies to them - broadband access to the internet and simple e-mail technology that allows you to communicate with your neighbours."

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Feeling Lonely ???

2005-11-28T22:59:42+01:00

Virtual reality's lonely lifestyle; in a society where so much emphasis is placed on mass communication, it seems surprising that loneliness has become a major ailment afflicting many Americans - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Despite the burst of community spirit exhibited all over the landscape after Sept. 11, Americans seem to have moved back to a preattack mode. Society has returned to the status quo, says Mary Jo Marchionni, a career and personal coach in Havertown, Pa., who counsels clients about the matter.

The villain? Marchionni blames the Internet. "It allows us to be isolated from activities that once required participating in the world, such as grocery shopping," she says. "Things that used to seem like chores now are the avenues for getting out to see people."

Individualistic lifestyles are fodder for loneliness, say cultural observers. "Some people are willing to accept the price of loneliness for the freedom that they think they have," says Paula Danzinger, a counselor and educator at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. "Loneliness is not so much about being alone as it is about feeling alone. The feeling of not being understood, of not being supported, of not being cared about, can cause a person to feel much lonelier than if they were actually alone." Examples:

Johann Christoph Arnold, a social critic and author of Escape Routes: For People Who Feel Trapped in Life's Hells, says Americans cannot seem to depend on others for even the smallest things. "To me, loneliness is one of the greatest hells today's man can live in," he says. "Forget about the Information Age; we live in the age of loneliness." His solution: relying less on technology and more on people.

"The time we spend on the computer cuts down on the time we could devote to a spouse, child or coworker who might be sitting right next to us," Arnold says. "I wish the day would come that our technology would collapse and, instead of depending on the technology, we would depend on each other."

It's a medical fact that lonely people get sicker sooner, says Bruce Rabin, medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's health-enhancement program. People who have had a heart attack or stroke are at a greater risk of having another one if they have little social interaction, he says.

But isolation seems built into the American psyche. Some 16.4 million Americans work out of their homes. And more Americans are living alone than ever before: 27 million one-person households, to be exact. Such a large population of single adults was unthinkable in previous generations. Loneliness also exists among the married if partners cannot or will not understand each other's needs.

"Most people do not know that loneliness is a problem until they feel it," says Gilda Carle, an authority on relationships and a grief therapist in Yonkers, N.Y. "Our culture typically incorporates Band-Aids in the form of material things to get us to forget about ourselves."

Joseph Tecce, an associate psychology professor at Boston College, says the lack of human touch is the essence of loneliness. "With all the cyber-richness of the Internet, its virtual reality cannot replace a warm smile, a firm handshake or a reassuring hug," he says. "It is essential to connect with someone in conversation and to share good and bad feelings to ward off loneliness."

Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, finds it ironic that so many people watch Friends rather than having friends themselves. People may be a little less lonely now, Putnam says, citing interviews conducted last November with 500 subjects who were also questioned a year earlier. When originally asked to identify the number of people they felt they could talk to if they were having a personal crisis, most couldn't think of anyone or only a few people. The events of Sept. 11, however, made the interviewees realize that people they didn't consider close actually are individuals they can turn to in times of crisis.

JOANNE HUDSON WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.

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Interactive Architecture

2005-11-25T02:19:51+01:00

The domain of architecture has been transformed by developments in interaction research, wearable computing, mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, RFID systems and ubiquitous computing. These technologies alter our understanding of space and change the way we relate to each other. We no longer think of architecture as static and immutable; instead we see it as dynamic, responsive and conversant.

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How Does Technology Transform Society?

2005-11-21T09:58:53+01:00

Since technological advance is unstoppable, social change is inevitable--and these tectonic shifts in society will affect our lives more than all those fancy widgets combined. Think about how technology has brought sweeping changes in our life at home and at work, and in entertainment, commerce, government, international relations, personal relations...

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Neighbours

2005-11-14T23:57:17+01:00

Pete just showed me this website, which I find very interesting.
A simple idea… which if adopted on a large scale could really make a bit of difference in the way we know and communicate with out neighbors… in the words of the creator on why Neigbornode was invented:

Neigbornode was developed because the Internet, while really good at connecting people half-way around the world, is really bad at connecting people who live across the street from each other (or a block from each other, or two blocks from each other). This can be liberating on one hand, but there are still lots of advantages to be gained by sharing information locally and opening lines of communication with others in your immediate area. The Internet for the most part has not cashed in on these advantages. Neighbornode addresses this issue by creating spaces for people in the same area to communicate easily with one another via the Internet, and by then building these separate spaces into a network, so that information can travel between locales as residents of those areas see fit. In this way, Neighbornode bridges the gap between the Internet and the neighborhood.

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Badass Blogs

2005-11-12T03:42:52+01:00

Activism, Architecture, Gadgets, Games, journalism, telephony, trends... Wi-Fi.
A very good Blog with some excellent links...
Allot on human interaction design and technology…

Also by the same beautiful young lady (Régine Debatty)... another Blog...
regarding European Art and design...

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Me, Myself and You

2005-11-08T03:24:39+01:00

DROOG
Dutch design at it's best...

Check out the "Me, Myself and you Exhibition" I think it's great... and gave me allot of inspiration for this project... a critic towards the Designer responsibilities in the making of objects and how they influence our social relations...

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Beware

2005-11-04T20:24:43+01:00

I found this the other day walking out of the tube station near my home.
A six meter tall four meter wide LCD screen... hooked up to a MASSIVE car sized generator
pumping black smoke onto the high street... so what’s the message...???

Hold on to your bags... don't look at anyone...buy as fast as you can... scuffle home even quicker… ???

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Easy-Tech

2005-11-04T14:30:08+01:00

Phidgets are an easy to use set of building blocks for low cost sensing and control from your PC. Using the Universal Serial Bus -USB- as the basis for all Phidgets, the complexity is managed behind an easy to use and robust Application Programming Interface (API). Applications can be developed quickly in Visual Basic, VBA (Microsoft Access and Excel), LabView, Java, Delphi, C and C++ and Macromedia Flash.

Thanks to Eric for helping me find this AMAZING website. This is the easy way of connecting the real world to your computer... without having to spend a whole month in the Electronics Lab and then another one trying to figure out how to code it... so now you can use high-Tec... concentrating more on the significance and detail of your project than the actual technical/engineering aspects of it...
They deliver to the entire world... and all there prices are in Canadian Dollars and I believe the components to be pretty cheap...

There is another website that sell more or less the same product, called: PhidgetsUSA but they seem to be more expensive... and well... I don't understand if they are the same company or not... I guess so. One in Canada... the other in the USA... you choose!

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LO_FI

2005-11-04T04:50:26+01:00

Crystalpunk Workshop from Utrecht... brings you loads of cool ideas on how and why you should rip open your baby brothers... sweet little toys.

LOW TECH PROPOSITION

Make sure you download the PDF for future reference... the video is NOT for the light hearted as it does get a bit gruesome towards the end !!!

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More Fashion Victims

2005-11-04T03:59:07+01:00

Erwin Olaf... 9 photographs... some nudity... more bags !!!

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Fashion Victims

2005-11-04T03:43:58+01:00

Three students from the Istituto Ivrea near Milano, study the impact of mobile technology, not solely on the direct user... but taking into account it's social environmental impact. Their website has a nice layout and the information is plenty... though at times not as direct as one would wish... and by the way... can someone tell me what that red stuff is...??? just ink... right..???

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Why the Blog...???

2005-11-04T01:08:55+01:00

Well… I guess blogs are a bit like Ipods nowadays… they make you more human.
And not being able to afford an Ipod… I thought it was time I started blogging.
I’m a final year Student at Brunel University and I study Product Design. I am in the process of developing my final year project and thought it would be interesting (for you) and helpful (for me) if I managed to keep this blog updated…

So… welcome !!!
Stef

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