June 19, 2000
New video examines impact of computers on human interaction
By Barbara McKenna
Through the advent of the web, we can get whatever we want online--groceries, prescriptions,
even pets. We can bank online, make friends online, even attend virtual concerts
and art shows online. One man in Dallas, who calls himself DotComGuy,
has even gone so far as to confine himself to his home for a full year, acquiring
everything he needs (including a Valentine's Day date) through the web.
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| Chip Lord |
"I started working on this during a sabbatical in early 1998," Lord says. "I wanted to look at how the computer is changing the ways in which we conduct daily life. One of my central goals was to find out whether the Internet and virtual networking--telecommuting, distance learning, e-commerce--have had an effect on how we use our physical space."
To explore this, Lord combines montages of life in San Francisco with interviews. Among those he interviews are Homer Flynn, spokesperson for a San Francisco underground, multimedia band named The Residents; John Sanborn, director of the online rock and roll murder mystery "Paul Is Dead"; Ellen Ullman, a software engineer, commentator, and author of Close to the Machine; Gannon Hall, a web site designer; and Rebecca Solnit, a social commentator and author of the just-published book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking Press).
Rather than aim to prove a point, Lord is out to explore the implications of our emerging computer-generated culture. One montage opens with a view of the old-fashioned marble-floored interior of a Wells Fargo Bank branch bank in San Francisco and fades to a nearby Safeway, in which a Wells Fargo "mini-bank" is built into the wall. The juxtaposition continues with a shot of a billboard advertising the bank's dramatic picture of racing horses pulling a stagecoach and, over that image, in stark white, the URL "www.wellsfargo.com."
"Is the physical space of the bank becoming obsolete?" Lord asks.
Through his interviews Lord also explores the impending fate of such things as the automobile, film, community. But the question that most concerns Lord is whether the physical space of the city itself is becoming obsolete.
Lord gets very different opinions from his subjects. Web designer and computing specialist Gannon Hall conducts most of his business virtually--through e-mail, web sites, and the phone. "Gannon recognizes that an initial face-to-face meeting with clients is necessary, but once he starts working on a project he does everything virtually, via the Internet. For Gannon, because his business is virtual, he could be anywhere. He doesn't need the city. To him, the city is like fashion. You choose it the same way you would choose clothes. He says, 'you wear the city.' "
But social commentator Rebecca Solnit feels very differently, affirming the importance of real-life interaction at such places as the Farmer's Market, where vendors and customers interact directly and chance encounters with friends can take place. To flesh out this perspective, Lord also shows footage of two groups of San Franciscans--bicyclists and rollerbladers. The bicycling event, called Critical Mass, is anything but virtual, drawing some 3,000 bicyclists each month who hit the streets during a Friday rush hour.
As Lord trails along with the rollerbladers, hundreds of whom come out each Friday for the "Friday Night Skate," he comes to this conclusion:
"Maybe because of the utopian images we hear about the new technologies, I thought that broadcasting, netcasting, wireless networks, and pagers, cellphones, and beepers all were conspiring to end the need for public gathering--for celebration and the ritual rubbing of shoulders in streets, plazas, and squares. But I was wrong. Because we still need fashion. We still need to wear the city because the city is..." Lord trails off, letting Humphrey Bogart, in the character of San Francisco detective Sam Spade, finish his sentence: "The stuff that dreams are made of."
For more on Lord's video, including excerpts of interviews with his subjects, visit his home page: arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/lord.
