The people from glass magazine invited me to write about space and distance in relation to my project80Days (oehm) project. Read it here

plan trips with strangers… groople.com

Imagine my joy, a open invite for proposals in the theme of 80DAYS. Imagine my dissappointment that the main focus is on ‘live-technology’, meaning the use of technology for real-time communication in order to reflect on today’s version of Jules Verne’s hasty traveller, who used technology to bridge distance regardless of the culture and people he might have the opportunity to see and explore on the way. Well, not really, he had time to stop(and stare), which in the end made him find his indian-princess-wife-to-be. So, I guess we can expect quite a few projects involving networked dating services;)
I am sitting here now lamenting, if I should still apply, as my 80DAYS is about slow travelling and the relevance of distance and location, rather than negating aforementioned by technology, if that is at all possible. Probably the biggest question in this case is the importance of context.

Context:

as in:
Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation and discourse

Context (dictionary.com) 2.the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

Why? Quite a few examples spring to mind. Look at the misunderstandings and shortcomings of email communication. Ask yourself why it is important to ask ‘where are you’ on most mobile phone calls. Consider the impact of fashion, smell, general surrounding have on a conversation or even on the initial approach of a situation’s participant towards others present. I remember working at the MIT in Dublin, having the full screen live 24/7 video wall in one of the studios. The technical aspect pretty much overshadowed the experience, but maybe that was because it was 6 years ago.

More interestingly, it reminded me of my first few months moving to Hamburg, Germany and London, UK respectively, as both have underground systems. The experience is as follows. You travel in between major points of interests(like a tourist or short term visitor), like a mole digging down underground, travel a certain few minutes, just to pop-up on the destination without ever getting a feel for the distance, the gradual change in e.g. university or shopping center to residential area. Or think about politics. Having a politician declare something without explanation of prior decisions can be seemingly outrageous and out-of-a-sudden(think any given day on any given free-undergound newspaper), context can make things slightly more understandable.
For me, taking the location or time element out of the equation is loosing context. In other words, think about why shopping, where everything is available right away, does not saturate our consumer needs much. Or think about the slow-food movement, which tried to point out what we loose to fast-food (apart from quality of food).

Sticky networks, or play more with Kevin Bacon

What are social networks all about? Exploring the people of the world? Think again:
a) social network sites have very limited user numbers
b) social network sites are actually fairly limited to some key areas of the planet (north america, europe)
c) language and geographical barriers still exist, e.g. germany uses wer-kennt-wen.de rather than facebook, brazil still uses orkut.com heavily
d) try to have arabic or japanese characters run in your browser
e) honestly, are you using the network in a much wider way than collecting friend-of-friends, who you already know?
f) Do pages like facebook really support community or rather expand self-importance. How many groups have you joined and left without ever actively participating in it?

Remember how the AOL browser used to(or still does) restrict the websites you will find entering words like ‘travel’. Google, does the same thing. There are special Google versions for some countries. Don’t expect to see the same results in any two countries. Yes, we can see the world, but the view is heavily biased, so are the opinions and knowledge offered. ‘But they are biassed everywhere!’. True, but I still wouldn’t mind to hear the other opinion as well, just think about the Live8 fiasco, a ‘global’ awareness concert in multiple locations around the planet to raise awareness about poverty in africa. Problem was not even the scarce appearance of african artists, but that hardly anyone in africa had heard about the ‘global’ event.

Generally, the internet is a great tool and support system, but far away from giving and adequate experience by taking out the physical aspects of life like e.g. location, distance, etc. It is the distance and hardship to stay in contact, that makes a connection worthwhile. Isn’t the most amazing thing about a friendship, that you can meet only once a year and still get on well? But hey, maybe I am an old-fart, post twitter generation, yes I am only 35.

So, in the end, what does my 80DAYS bring to the table?

Thinking about yet someone else telling me that ‘they love to travel’ and ‘want to go on a world trip’, I start to feel uncomfortable. Maybe I am too busy with my work that I love doing, just been to Brighton and Madeira a few weeks ago and, oh yeah just got married off the north coast of colombia to my beautiful colombian wife and am back in London. Only the latter being of a private nature, all other work related, I for the last 10 years have been living the luxury to go abroad, see other countries and visiting friends of mine, mostly natives to the place I visited them, mostly paid via work or work related engagements. Plus I never liked the planned kind of holiday. The kind that that my secondary school mates clique-style planned one year(!) in advance, only to experience the default ‘german goes to mallorca or the like to get drunk and loose their virginity several times to other drunk germans’ gig. There are many versions for many different age and social groups doing just that. Have sushi in japan, see a kangaroo in oz, but please, never walk off the comforting path of the cultural cliche.
That’s why I hate generic tourism. When people ask me if I found one of the panty vending machines in Tokyo, or if the coke in colombia is really that good. Realize it: media can’t capture a country and it’s people. Or can it? Well there is always the easy way to get attention. Michael Moore, before he was more bearded, did a documentary about germany called ‘Codename: Charlie’.
I watched it in germany and had never heard of most of these things he was talking about. And if I heard about them, then there were mere tiny anomalies rather than what the usual german ever experiences in their life. Yet, according to Moore, we are very very crazy about garden dwarfs and cockoo clocks(which everyone agreed is very 60s at the least) and are a country that indulges in demonstrations where noone knows about what they are demonstrating for and employs university professors preaching the Auschwitz lie, amongst other common right-wing activities seemingly on the daily menu of germany. The movie left me disturbed, now 10 years later, the pattern of information filtering is a rather clear one. Both sides are using it and they question is, if extreme positions can make a good case for cultural and knowledge exchange.
Where was I? Yeah, would a world trip fix this, or is it just the luxury of not having to work and staring at nice things?

A book accompanying an art exhibition about travel and art. Full of critical pieces about how we perceive tourism and it’s effects on cultures and social groups. I found it in Amsterdam and couldn’t put it down, till I was through. Nice to have writers who don’t want to impress you with cryptic arty-farty ego trips for a change, but actually have something to say.

It was only a matter of time till video community websites start to specialize. As it also plays with the relevance of location-based content AND travel, I had to blog it.
What Flickr is doing now with location based photos, Travellistic wants to connect the travellers’ videos with their trips. Hotel commercial show or just an animated Flickr of Ibiza crazed kids and their records on where to loose your virginity most fool-proof, time will tell, I will try to get an account soon.

go to travellistic.com