Friday was Aboriginal Action Day in Canada. (I can attest to the fact that the First Nations live in lesser conditions than others just from driving through the reserves on Vancouver Island a few days ago.) It was also the start of the Canada Day long weekend. But to the folks at this conference it was the day of the release of the iPhone.I am, of course, really into the wonderful papers and ideas being exchanged here. But there are a number of things that I’ve found somewhat sideways about this experience, a large conference with experts in the field and a mix of technologists, futurists and educators. I’ve met (?) people who look startled when faced with human contact. Seen attendees photographing the PowerPoint slides with digital cameras. Sat in rooms full of people clicking continually at keyboards during presentations and rarely looking up.
And despite the fact that everyone was talking Web 2.0 apps as valuable for making social and professional connections, personalizing the internet, bringing people together, and creating real community, all the sessions I went to were lecture-based slide presentations, though one spent some time in Second Life.
I wasn’t the only one sensing the disconnect, of course — some speakers even mentioned it as they went into their PowerPoint act. But there was a sense of removal from reality, and a somewhat desperate determination not to let things pass us by.
Bebo White‘s keynote about Web 2.0 noted that less than 13% of web users actually contribute anything themselves to 2.0 applications (read-write, social networking or data mashups). That is quite a bit lower than I thought. Jacqui Chen’s ars technica article notes that these are the “creators”, while others are spectators, users, joiners, etc. Thus the “wisdom of crowds” seems to be based on a rather small crowd indeed, even if it’s a self-directed innovative group. I was clearly a member (or observer) of a rather selective community, even if its members seemed to have some challenges in communicating with each other in person.
This gave me a sense like that of the professors holed up in that Gary Cooper movie, writing an encyclopedia without experiencing the real world. Cooper’s character, a linguist, does end up going outside and getting a real life in the name of current research. I left the conference on Friday, watched the aboriginal protest march, got caught in the rain at Stanley Park, and saw “Taming of the Shrew” at Bard on the Beach. Sometimes ya gotta get out.
