This week we talked about online identities, the influence of social media on these identities, and what is the authentic you. I wish I could say that Jim and I had planned everything that the seminar uncovered this week, but it’s not true. This is clearly a fast moving space, where we have much more to learn and discover about ourselves and each other. I strongly encourage everyone in the class to read each other’ blogs this week. They are a fascinating read.
This weekend I was catching up on some pleasure reading and came across the Wired.com article titled “Snap’s Spectacles Are the Beginning of a Camera-First Future” by David Pierce. (Apparently, these are a hot thing to buy right now too.) The Wired article talks about video blogger Jesse Wellens and his first experience with Snap’s Spectacles. Connected to this week’s seminar, I was intrigued to read the following paragraph from the article:
A few days later, Wellens published his first vlog in a while, shot entirely in the 10-second, circular Spectacles format. He says it felt different from any other episode. Before, he says, “I would film myself and other people, but when there are cameras out, you always get a different reaction from other people.” But with Spectacles, “You’re getting a real, inside look into someone’s life. This is a way that you’re getting real raw emotions, and interactions.” He only had to make one alteration to get there: he stuck a round piece of electrical tape over the spot above his left eye, where Snap put a spinning circle of LEDs that indicates the wearer is taking video.
There’s that authentic thing again. Clearly Wellens feels that the personality we show in front of a camera is not the “real” us. So, the thing we do in front of a camera, which in this day and age we know will persist probably long after we’re gone, is not who we are, but just what we want the generations that follow to think about us? (Please imagine me shaking my head in confusion.) I have seen that some people become more reserved in front of a camera, while others more gregarious and even outrageous. Are our unguarded moments more real? And how do we process the fact that these are 10-second moments placed on Snapchat, which promises us that they’ll be ephemeral glimpses of us shared with our friends? That wasn’t enough to get the “real raw emotions” that Wellens desired? I have to admit that I am nowhere near feeling like I have any understanding of this space and where it is going.
I want to share one other experience I had in the last two weeks. This related experience wasn’t in a new technology setting, but in what I think of as an “old school” setting. In particular, I had to give a deposition in a legal matter, and this deposition included not only a whole raft of lawyers packed into a small room with a court stenographer, but also a court videographer. It’s hard to forget that the stenographer is there during your 7 hours of grilling, since that person sits right next to you and between you and the lawyer asking you questions. I suppose that that location is best for the stenographer to hear both the lawyer’s questions and your answers. The videographer and her camera, however, sit at the other end of the room. You’re the only person shown in the video shot, as my lawyer explained to me. And interestingly, he said in preparing me for the deposition that I’d soon forget about the fact that the camera was there. As someone who dislikes being filmed, I had my doubts, but my lawyer was right. The video camera soon faded into the background (in a manner unlike my attention on the stenographer). Given that the purpose of a deposition is find out what the witness knows and preserve it, I find it interesting that the legal system doesn’t seem to feel that it needs to “place electrical tape” over the fact that the witness is being videotaped to get “real raw emotions and interactions.”
There is so much we still don’t understand.