In meatspace, if you’re fortunate, you likely reside somewhere. How that looks varies from person-to-person. For some, they own. For others, they rent. For those who don’t subscribe to a stationary life, it may be a vehicle, van, or camper. Or hostels, hotels, and short-term accommodations.
They come in various forms and shapes.
Digital space follows similar patterns. You procure space on a server somewhere, whether using your own, or paying for a hosting service. You upload some HTML files. And mixed into that, if you’re technically proficient, a CMS that someone else built or you rolled your own. Later, services popped up that took all of that out of your hands and you could focus on creating. This residence is available at a URL, on the open web, that people are able to view. This is your website.
Your site is a home.
Eventually, social networks were created: MySpace, Friendster, Facebook. Later came Twitter and Instagram. Novelty and the promise of interconnectedness by gathering in a common town square to blast out whatever was going on in our lives eventually won out.
But you might have still had your website, your home to return to. Your environment, your quiet, your safe space. The place you could think, eat, sleep, and recharge. The place you built.
Things started to change and instead of going home, you, and everybody else started to live in the town square. Suddenly you had to compete with them for space, time, attention, and engagement. The central meeting place continued to attract many as the place to be. Millions. All of these voices want a little bit of your space, even when there's none left. All of these voices shouting over each other to see how many of us would pay attention. There is no rest at the town square.
It is an everlasting party, or an eternal mosh pit.
There is a shape to your physical home. Arranged and organized in the ways that make sense for you, the reward is a space that works for you. That you can keep adding to or subtracting from, rearranging or re-doing when things no longer work or your energy or lifestyle seeks a new configuration that best suits you where you are.
A platform or network doesn’t allow for much configuration. The town square isn’t owned by you. It’s owned and operated by parties who have business goals, or otherwise, to achieve. The town square they built wasn’t created for the public good, even if that’s what they told us. They built it so they could put up massive billboards and flashing signs and lights everywhere, screens changing with the loudest voices that some of your fellow square members paid for. The town square now exists because you’re there and an opportunity exists. Sometimes they’d promote your voice for “free.” People would briefly pay attention to you. And you’d feel really good about that. For a few moments at least.
People became absolutely reliant on the same gathering place, Nazis and all. They become used to sleeping in the plaza, butting up against friends, frenemies, and enemies. The convenience of seeing friends (sometimes) outweighed your other neighbors spouting garbage and hate. You came to rely on this place for everything. You brought your sleeping pad and bag, and maybe a little tent, and are ready for anything.
You can still have a home. A place to hang up your jacket, or park your shoes. A place where you can breathe out. A place where you can hear yourself think critically. A place you might share with loved ones who you can give to, and receive from.
My previous homes have come in various forms, shapes, sizes, and ambitions. My digital ones have followed similarly — they have matched my life, evolving as I did. I have as much control and independence as I’d like.
I have very little at the town square, because it’s not a public one. It’s a walled-off town square, whose rules and borders change at the whims of those who created it. The secret is that it’s not even that: it’s actually a panopticon. As conceived of by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham, a panopticon is an institutional building — a prison — designed with a central tower at its center while the inmates reside in a circle around it, under its watch.
Between 1926 and 1931, the Cuban government built four such panopticons connected with tunnels to a massive central structure that served as a community centre. Each panopticon had five floors with 93 cells. In keeping with Bentham's ideas, none of the cells had doors. Prisoners were free to roam the prison and participate in workshops to learn a trade or become literate, with the hope being that they would become productive citizens. However, by the time Fidel Castro was imprisoned at Presidio Modelo, the four circulars were packed with 6,000 men, every floor was filled with trash, there was no running water, food rations were meagre, and the government supplied only the bare necessities of life.
— Wikipedia
Social networks adopt a playbook that feels similar. Give your users leeway, but only so much so they can survive and feel some modicum of freedom or creativity, but hold back on customer support, moderation, and a code of conduct or guidelines that would ever allow for anyone to truly thrive.
When I was kindly interviewed by Kai Brach for Offscreen Magazine, I said, “As I get older, I’m realizing that I’d rather leave a meaningful impact with a small group of people I know than faceless millions. The connection matters to me.” That was in 2013, when I was 36. 11 years later, I still feel that way. I don’t need to be in a walled garden but I’d love to have you over at my place.
Thanks for visiting my home. I’m glad you dropped by.
I’d love to see yours sometime.