We never look up is a photo blog. The photographer is a “mobile researcher from Finland” – that’s all we know about him or her. The black and white pictures show people interacting with the screens of their phones while being in public space. Some of them are sitting or standing; others are walking. Locations include sidewalks, squares, bars, shopping malls, public transports, busstops, etc. The people in the pictures seem to be glued to their screens. They are physically in public space, but it’s more accurate to say they are inside their own private world.

The author stated in an interview that he or she doesn’t want to criticize – the purpose is to document. The photo blog caused quite a lot of reactions. Many people see the smartphone trend as negative:

• We don’t look at our surroundings anymore.
• We don’t talk to each other anymore.
• We seem to be addicted: we can’t stop.

Why do we have moral issues with these new technologies? Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist who’s the director of Intel Corporation’s Interaction and Experience Research. According to her new technology is seen as negative if it simultaneously changes our relation with space, time and other people:

1. Space. This is the case with smart phones: we are in our private bubble when using our phones in public.

I wrote before about how GPS changes the way we navigate the city: we follow the fastest route calculated by the software. Moving from A to B becomes very instrumental: we move our bodies to the destination. There is less chance for surprises and actual discoveries. We have less opportunity to build up a mental map of a city.

2. Time. Our internet connection in our smart phone means we’re always connected. The boundary between work and leisure becomes blurred. We can read email anytime now, even if we’re away from our computers. There’s a growing expectancy that email will be replied to quickly, not within days but rather hours.

Smartphones seem to accelerate our life. Think about making pictures for example. In the era of the analog camera, it took days before pictures could be shared with friends. Now this is an instant process. (See also Douglas Rushkoff’s Program or Be Programmed, especially chapter 1 on time.)

3. Other people. The pictures on the We never look up blog seem to suggest that we lost something there. Something has changed in our social relationships, but I’m not so sure that it’s as dramatic as some people suggest.

Let’s think about affordances: a smart phone is designed for solo experiences (small screen size, comes with earbuds, …) But so are books, newspapers and magazines. A friend who made a trip around the world told me he noticed the same unwritten social law in hostels everywhere: reading a book means “leave me alone”, while having a closed book in front of you on the table is a signal that you’re available for a chat.

Perhaps we’re nostalgic for an era that never existed? Hasn’t disconnecting from the world always been a part of life in the city? A necessity to make life amongst the crowds possible?

One important difference between smart phones and printed media: it’s almost impossible to guess what a smartphone user is engaged in – might be an email, a game, a book, … The design of printed matter betrays some its content, for example the cover of a book or the newspaper format. For my globetrotting friend, the title of a book might be a good conversation starter. Would we be less annoyed by the people around us that were glued to their smartphones if we had some indication of what they were doing? What if the back or side of our phone could for example show the name of article we were reading?

What form will the new, hyperconnected flaneur take, now that our right to lose ourselves in the city or discover unexpected spots while looking for a late-night pharmacy is no longer taken for granted? Perhaps one possible role of cultural institutions will be to imagine new urban experiences that enrich physical space with a certain poetry, to return some serendipity to the street experience, or to help us resignify data or reencounter furtive space.

Quoted from Smart Citizens in the Data Metropolis by Mara Balestrini, on the CCCB LAB blog.

I’m thinking a lot about location, presence, distance, space, maps and related concepts lately.

Since I’m living in a city which is still relatively new, I’ve come to rely on the GPS map functionality of my smart phone. It’s amazing how quickly we get used to this and how it affects our experience of the city. Navigating the city like this turns it into generic space, each location interchangeable for the other. (In Barcelona, this is amplified by the regularity of the grid pattern of the Eixample.)

The process of getting familiar with a place becomes unnecessary. We are strangers and have just arrived here, yet we already know our way.

The absence of GPS not only forces us to get to know a place, but also its people, when we ask for directions.

Unique features of places fade into the background. For example: we pay less attention to street names. They become less important for identifying a location when we have a GPS and compass in our phones.

GPS also seems to affect the space between current location and destination. An algorithm sends us alongs the most efficient route. A conventional map still required us to understand what was between here and there. Routing applications have gotten so good that we don’t need to care anymore.

I gave a short presentation on the runner’s medal during the 2012 Visualizing Global Marathon.

Slides are available.

Moving to Barcelona in a few days to participate in the Master in Advanced Interaction Design. Excited!