Is It Strange to Say I Miss the Bodies of Strangers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/magazine/turkish-baths-istanbul.html

by mncharity • 6 years ago

1 1 6 years ago

mncharity• 6 years ago

Until it was so abruptly pruned, I did not appreciate the breadth of diversity, in modalities of contact and communication, of which my life was woven. So many physical spaces and patterns of use, richly balancing access and privacy, contact and distance.

Likely there is a long tail of imaginative online spaces... but if asked, I'd not know what to suggest to someone to explore for them.

Have we sufficient imagination here?

Is there a page of collective murmured audio, anonymous and yet conveying a multitude of lives in progress? Is there a page where people wander by, to discuss what they're puzzled by, in front of a virtual whiteboard? Are there gatherings, where you can wander among spoken conversations, listening for keywords of interest?

Tech constrains. And yet, physical space is itself so very constraining. We've fleshed out physical constraints into social poetry. Though with it's impacts on inclusion and squandered opportunities, it's so often a poetry steeped in loss and harm. Are we exploring the social poetry potential within current tech constraints? Are there art projects of online sociality? How might one search for such?

The article reminded me there is a vast richness to the physical social world. And the digital social world, at least mine, now, has rather less. But that doesn't seem necessitated by available tech.

Is It Strange to Say I Miss the Bodies of Strangers?

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