Definition:
Social Object. At first I was looking for the definition of social object. perhaps not quite the same one on the brief -
In a simpler term, social objects provides reasons to allow people to get together and be socialize.
In this sense, the object stand between two communicators is the social object, although in the text it was specifically refers to human being, but I do consider it can be anything as long as the communication is the definite process within the interaction, the object or medium which forms the communication is the social object.
Social?
As I first came across Sherry Turkle for my assignment back in the BA, I have always interested in how are we actually can solve this problem we have now-a-day.
The V&A major project sort of linked me back to the topic, coincidentally this very project is about an object communicates with people or objects via physical computing. This might be a good chance for me to take a step forward to explore this area more.
As the "Connected, but alone?" goes, the thought behind it is quite simple yet completely unforgettable in modern society. Technology has helped us to be socialize without physically being in the situation. Social network has done a perfect job of allowing people to keep in touch with friends and family yet not to loose time on those social interactions. On the surface it has tremendous positive effects on our life. We save time to do more work/earn more money, geographic boundaries are no longer the reason why we lose contact with somebody and we get to meet more friends than we physically can.
But really is that the life we are suppose to have in the future? We are slowly losing grip on real social networking as dinner party is just friends sitting in a same room to play with their mobile phones. We need to acknowledge the limit of virtual social networking and it`s potential impact of our life.
Ideas:
So my project is probably going to be around this area, to discuss the way of encouraging people be less on social medias and more on physical social interactions with the others.
The idea came from a french sort film "TECHOPHOBE" by Cyprien. The story basically goes that what happen if people are allergic to technology in this era, as they would get burned when touching any technological products, what could the world be and how would people adapt to that scenario.
This would be an interesting thing to try, what if we cannot hold or touch anything that is technological? i.e. mobile phones, computers, gaming devices, etc. how will people survive in this internet-heavy world. what could we expect people to react if we restrict their use of any electronic products in their life. Would this experience make us think more about our real life with real people instead of those on the internet whom we have never seen?
So I would like to make this as my project for social object, instead of virtually connect people through technology, the project is actually removing people from the technology and encourage them connect each other by traditional means.
This might challenge the brief in some way as it's asking an object which is to connect people or object, my idea in summary is to connect people to people indirectly. But I still think its a valid proposal, because its purpose seems to disconnect people from the internet and the virtual world, but the final goal is still to connect people to people.
More detail on the project is still being considered but I would like to follow this direction as i think it's quite fascinating.
Reading on the subject:
https://oxedtech.wordpress.com/tag/connected-but-alone/
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/26/151351550/what-we-have-here-a-failure-to-communicate
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/10/171490660/we-need-to-talk-missed-connections-with-hyper-connectivity
Related TED talks and videos:
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