Most everyone in a city like Vancouver has a cell phone nowadays. That glorious little piece of technology, that seems to get more and more features on a daily basis. I, myself, own a lovely little Blackberry. We’re all becoming more connected in more places. However, while one might assume that this would lead to greater social interaction, I’m noticing the exact opposite.
Cell phones act as the perfect excuse to *not* interact with the people around you. If you look busy, people are less likely to even attempt interaction with you. Have you ever got onto a busy elevator, and seen a bunch of the people grab for their cell phones? It’s not just because they’re coo coo for connectivity (lame pun courtesy of What The Buck?), but they just have an urge to be busy, rather than taking that minute or so to say hello or strike up a conversation with a fellow passenger.
The same applies to MP3 players. The technology takes the social aspect out of regularly social situations. Over the past 3 years, I’ve commuted on the West Coast Express. Most of the time it makes for a pretty leisurely commute (this is of course setting aside the fact that I despise commuting in any form). On the train, you are sitting/standing with a group of people on *public* transit. However, a disturbingly large number of people are not paying attention to what is going on, let alone engaging in social interaction. They’ve all got their headphones in and are listening to the latest Coldplay song or what have you. When the train pulls into the station, and everyone crowds out to head up the escalator to street level, you really see how bad it really is.
Now, I’m not innocent of this. I’m actually one of the guiltiest out there, being a naturally introverted person. If I’m with someone and I’d rather not speak to them, I instinctively try look busy to prevent social interaction. The cell phone is usually one of the first things I grab for because it’s always on me. However, I started to see it in other people, and then realized I was doing it myself. I now am trying to make an active effort to *not* reach for my phone or other tech gadget, as I’m not only preventing myself from socializing, but I’m stifling anyone else who may want to socialize with me. And you know, you tend to meet some interesting people by simply asking someone else for the time, rather than looking at the cell phone in your pocket.
Tweeting the day away
I’ve noticed a recent explosion in the media talk about Twitter. There are about a million explainations of what Twitter does, but put very simply, it’s a service that centres around the concept of “micro-blogging”. Micro-blogging is where a person posts short, frequent messages out to the web. These can be anything from an aggregation on information (pictures, cool links, news, etc) to status messages, to just random thoughts going through a person’s mind.
What really makes this concept different from other communication methods, is it allows celebrities, public figures, even companies, to connect directly with their users. With a regular website or blog, in many cases posts and information is distributed one direction (from the person or company, to us, the audience). We can’t really respond, and start up the conversation. Additionally, in many cases, the audience feels further disconnected, as many if not most celebrities and public figures, have their public website and blog content screened by PR. In some cases, it may not even be written by the figure at all.
However, with 140 character messages, that the celebrity or public figure can send from their phone or computer.. it’s coming directly from them. And it’s interesting to see what these people are thinking or doing. For example, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, Comedian Rainn Wilson, US President Barack Obama, and Actress Felicia Day are just a few of the public figures I keep track of on Twitter.
In the political scene, Twitter is creating a bit of a stirr. Politicians in both the US and Canada can connect directly to the public to get their message out. No news media, PR reps, or anything in between. Down south, Tweet Congress is a website dedicated to locating your local congress men and women on Twitter. Many of them talk about bills they’re working on, or events they are attending. In Canada, Mayor Robertson, NDP Leader Jack Layton, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper use Twitter to let people know their personal thoughts on recent policies and events.
This can be both a good and a bad thing for these politicians. During the recent address by President Obama to a joint session of the US Congress, Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) made a comment about the seating arrangements. Some people criticized him for being rude and sending these messages during the speech, but the one thing you can say is that it brings you closer to the people who are representing you in government. In the case of celebrities and other public figures, you quickly find out that these are normal people, who have random thoughts that they want to share with the world too.
It’s also interesting to watch trending on Twitter and see what people around the world are actively talking about, in real time. Sites like Summize (which was bought by Twitter itself a while back), and Twitscoop all you to search and see visual trends about what people are talking about. A regular person with a quick hand, a cell phone, and Twitter, was able to snap a picture of the February 25, 2009 crash of a Turkish Airlines plane at the Amsterdam airport. This picture was all over the internet, before CNN and other major news networks were able to break the story. Even this morning, I just learned that there was an unfortunate shooting in Maryville, IL at a church.
Twitter is even changing the ways that companies interact with their customers. Companies like Dell Computers, Zappos Shoes, Virgin America Airlines, and Comcast use Twitter to not only monitor what people are saying and thinking about their company and products, but use Twitter to interact directly with those clients and improve their customer service experience. We do this too at Peer1 and ServerBeach.
Twitter is just one service out there. The interactivity of social networks (everything from Twitter, to Facebook, MySpace, and the myriad of others) is allowing the faster, more direct, and wider dispersal of information than we have ever seen before. The concept isn’t revolutionary, per-ce.. but it’s changing once again how we get and give that information.
It will be interesting to see what comes next. And of course, you can follow me on Twitter here.