The other day, a group of architecture students were talking in the studio. As per usual, they're talking about architecture. They are sitting around a studio desk, when one student firmly believes that, "..in order to advance our technology and be able to look further into the future, we will have to sacrifice our personal interactions." The other students think about it for a minute and quickly gang up to disagree with the student, who replied by instantly shoving his opinions and futuristic predictions down the naysayer's throats. One student on the other hand, stood up and said,
"Well, what about Tinder then?"
For those of you who don't know, Tinder is most often used as a dating (but mostly hookup) app. In the app, you either swipe right to say, "Yes, I think this person is physically attractive," or left for, "um.. she/he's not really what I'm looking for." If yall were to both swipe right, then there would be a "match," and you're suddenly asked if you would like to chat with that person through the app. Usually what follows is some talking and then plans to meet in person.
However shallow this app may be, it instantly grew in popularity since the thought being able to meet and experience something in real life, not solely virtual and over the internet, was innately intriguing to the curious little cat inside every human. Right around the time that Tinder gained it's so-well-known-that-it-has-its-own-abbreviations level of popularity, apps started attempting to base their ideas off of Tinder's main idea. Tinder's main idea was not to create an app strictly for use on your phone; their idea was to transform the phone into a simple channel through which people could meet and connect in real life.
People have started getting all worked up about how technology is "destroying our children's lives" and "the reason why people have dreadful social skills nowadays." It's true, more or less. In today's time, we hardly even know our next door neighbors anymore. And if you live in an house, there's probably an even greater chance that you have probably never even met a few of your neighbors. As for those of you, this is what a neighbor is by definition: "Neighbor: A person living next door or around the same vicinity as you." (And I'm not just talking about being friends with your next door neighbors solely out of convenience of keeping a spare key over there.)
But people have slowly started to realize that the "at-home" luxury is sometimes not all it's cracked up to be. People crave external attention. This is why the word "lonely" has such a depressing connotation attached to it. We LOVE going out to dinner (despite our wallet's wails) and sitting among other people living their daily lives. We are interested in other people. Can you believe we PAY hard-earned cash to go to giant rooms where they project giant people up on a ratty fabric that's been there since the place was built, and for roughly two measly hours, we got to PAY to see into the lives (fictional or not) of others through their or someone else's eyes. (Also lookup: "movie") This phenom isn't anything new or hipster either. We've been entertaining ourselves with other people and their imaginitive stories of other people since the beginning of time. Think cavedrawings, plays, amphitheatres, movies, etc! Wherever you are, we are here to create our own interactions.
So... when the student thought that advancing technology would mean less personal interactions, I told him he was wrong.
YES, with Facebook you can now have "virtual real friends," but what made that so fabulous in the first place was the fact that there was an actual human being behind that friend request, wanting to "be your friend" for unknown reasons. YOUR friend. They chose you. Yeah I'll admit it; it makes everyone feel a little special inside. YES, we have resorted to eating dinner in front of the television. That only shows our want to see into other's lives even more since you are only watching strings of events of people show after show. (The problem is, you possibly need to be more interested in you own family's life then.) YES, technology has recently had a recurring trend of being put in the place of communicating face-to-face with friends and family.
BUT. The trend is changing. Now is the time for inventions to create real-life interactions instead of replacing them. Technology is now used to grease interface with other humans like yourself. This is the trend that I see happening in the future. We already know that "two heads are better than one," and we need to fully embrace that and utilize that to its full potential.
We already work mostly in groups in the "architectural world" anyway. Most architectural firms have open environments that bring people together and spur on creativity. We're a building/floor/office full of dreamers and imagineers. What would you expect?
The challenge here is bringing that sense of community (such as working at the same company) into people's social lives, to make them feel like theyr'e a part of something (much like a city, as one company already birthed that app idea) Hopefully then, they are able to take that small step for a man, but one giant leap for mankind (to create that technology) outside of their comfort zones and meet their neighbors.
So. What side are you on?
