#LifeCasting vs. We Live in Public
Okey dokey raviokey ... I just finished watching "We Live in Public" *cue @gomiso checkin*
I've been trying to explain this notion of lifecasting to the uber big wiggie people with money - and a few of them have seen this film, and keep asking me what the difference is. Having not see it, I wasn't able to really comment ... but HOLY CRAP that guy is insane!!!!!!!!!! Definitely a visionary, as he foresaw the whole fascination of social media and the notion of broadcasting your life ... but come on!!! A gun range, and drugs, and THAT many people!!?!?!
Okay okay ... here's a bit of the back story per wiki:
The film details the experiences of "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of,"[1] Josh Harris. The dot.com millionaire founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous tech boom of the late '90s. After achieving prominence amongst the Silicon Valley set, Harris became interested in controversial human experiments which tested the effects of media and technology on the development of personal identity. Ondi Timoner documented the major business-related moments of Harris's life for more than a decade, setting the tone for her documentary of the virtual world and its supposed control of human lives.[1]
Among Harris' experiments touched on in the film is the art project "Quiet: We Live in Public," an Orwellian, Big Brother type concept developed in the late '90s which placed more than 100 artists in a human terrarium under New York City, with myriad webcams following and capturing every move the artists made.[2] The pièce de résistance was a Japanese-style capsule hotel outfitted with cameras in every pod, and screens that allowed each occupant to monitor the other pods[3] installed in the basement by artist Jeff Gompertz.[4]
The film's website describes how, "With Quiet, Harris proved how, in the not-so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire. Through his experiments, including another six-month stint living under 24-hour live surveillance online which led him to mental collapse, he demonstrated the price we will all pay for living in public."
"He climbs into the TV set and he becomes the rat in his own experiment at this point, and the results don't turn out very well for him[5]," says Timoner of the six month period Harris broadcast his life in his NYC loft live online. "He really takes the only relationship that he's ever had that was close and intimate and beaches it on 30 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 invasive microphones. I mean his girlfriend who signed on to it thinking it would be fun and cool, and that they were living a fast and crazy Internet life, she ended up leaving him. She just couldn't be intimate in public. And I think that's an important lesson; the Internet, as wonderful as it is, is not an intimate medium. It's just not. If you want to keep something intimate and if you want to keep something sacred, you probably shouldn't post it."
The film includes commentary from internet personalities Chris DeWolfe, Jason Calacanis and venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
Kind of gives you a good idea of what I'm talking about if you haven't seen it ... and here's a vid:
Alrite, now I feel like we are more on the same page. But let's break a few things down here ... this guy is bat shit crazy. I know I have my moments of insanity, but I also did some really rad soul searching (thanks good ol' buddha!), and have very honestly never been more "solid" for lack of a better word in my entire life. I know my shit, and drugs, alcohol, whatever - dude, I even gave up caffeine to see what organic awesomeness was like. Josh Harris, I am DEFINITELLYYYY NOTT!!!!!!!! I think as far as the medium is concerned, yes he was without a doubt onto something - but his timing was off. In 1999, when he started his experiment, we were not at the same tipping point we are now with the online medium. It was still reserved for the nerds in the basement, and the creepers jerking off on yahoo chat. To say it is night and day is an understatement. Both the actual technology was not ready, as broadband was not readily available until 2005, and the end user ... the people who were supposed to be the ones broadcasting their lives, were not comfortable in cyber space. It was just off, off, off, off, off. Timing was SOOO friggen off.
Broadcasting video 24/7 does not work. I tried it on LiveVideo - I was PhotoJeNic on that site. It's not very interesting. What I do is across all the workable elements of social media. From where I go, thanks to FourSquare - I can checkin, and the end user at home watching ... can see a map of where I am, even a menu. Whatever they want. I can tweet while I am there, and even twitpic what is around me. Should I choose to actually go live with video content, I can via UStream, and enhance the quality of the feed via an Owle Bubo. This is on lock - it's there ... and anyone can do it. But it CANT CANT CANT CANT CANT be done 24/7. Just doesn't work. There are times that I need a break, I need to breathe - but I am also 25, single, with not a single attachment to anything material in all of the world. I've created a weird environment where I can control variables better, and do it all myself. He had SOO many people involved with his experiment, and its something that wouldn't translate in social media. We want the engagement, and following that many people - just wouldn't work. The audience interacts with me directly. I answer every email, every tweet, every anything from anyone. No bullshit, no "people" doing it for me ... it's all real, and organic.
Josh was definitely on to something with his experiment, but again - right place, right time, right frame of mind.
#NuffSaid
PS. Totallyyyy see the flick if you can - it rocked my nerdy socks off!!!