I am old enough to remember the times when having a phone on a table at a restaurant was seen as a lack of "savoir vivre". I am talking about a simple phone, a Nokia 3310 style of phone, not a smartphone. In this epoch, witnessing a couple walking together while one, or both, partner was talking on the phone looked strange. This odd feeling came from the idea that when you are with someone it was a sign of bad education to give priority to the ones that were not here. Nowadays the situation is more aptly described with the meme sentence: "How it started ... how it ended".
In the fight of synchronous vs asynchronous communications, the latter has won hands down. New information technologies have played a paramount role in the outcome of this fight. Before, interruptions were only possible if you had a physical access to the person you wanted to talk to (even if you had this famous theorem that as soon as you entered the jacuzzi, the phone was going to ring). Therefore, it was always possible to physically lock the door of your office to be able to think without being interrupted. Nowadays, due to the ubiquitous nature of networks, your smartphone is always within your reach and constantly linked to the network, tables have completely turned. All sorts of notifications, from system updates to various social media messages (email being just one of them) pop up, in red and under the form of particularily irritating spots, on your screens.
There are deep issues here. Cal Newport exposes many problems linked with this never interrupting flow of interruptions with great insights. For example on this nice podcast of The Realignment.
I would like to talk about a tangential issue in this post: the end of the end. New information technologies have transformed the cultural production also by turning it into an endless process. One of the most troubling aspect of modern conversations is that they are done asynchronously and sychronously at the same time without a clear time limit marking the end of the conversation.
When you are talking with someone, or having any kind of synchronous exchange, there are clear boundaries on when the conversation starts and when it ends. People have to agree on a rendez-vous, when they separate the conversation is (locally) over. Nothing of this sort happens when you send a tweet. By doing this you start an open conversation that has no clear ending.
This remark can be extended to many cultural domains. For instance blogs: contrary to books that are precisely defined, a blog can be seen as a never ending book. Movie franchise and the development of series through the explosion of content platforms like Netflix have extended this evolution to the sphere of cultural products that are played. The contrast with classical theater, in which you had the unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time, is striking.
Open conversations have the advantage to allow the writer to interact with his readers. It is not exactly new: in the XIX° century there was already this idea in serial novel production (with famous writers like Eugène Sue or Maurice Leblanc), in which writers adapted the course of the book with relation to the reader’s letters.
This absence of ending has many downsides though. From a psychological point of view it doesn’t help the creators to do their best: after all, it will always be time to amend the work later. The love of perfectionism is not particularly encouraged. From the outside it is also very hard to think about an object that is not finished. Of course it makes the imagination to work, but imagination is not the only insight we are capable of. Being able to manipulate, and study in deep, an object along many angles is of paramount importance.
Borrowing from my own experience, I remember the times when it was hard to gather information about chess. Having one book on one opening was something important. For instance I have studied “Tartacover vous parle” (I don’t think there is an english translation of this book) for more than a year. This book is made of around 60 games, played in the first half of the XX°, commented. This amount of information can appear ridiculously small by today’s standard where you can litterally access millions of chess games on line within seconds. If you need to study an opening you can, in less than one second, gather all the games played on this opening. This stream of endless information is never ending: you can get back the games while they are played live in tournament if you like (most tournaments display the games live on the internet). In hindsight I have learned much more by the study of the book than by having access to unlimited database. It is more than the standard quality vs quantity thing usual discussion. The fact that you have one book that is limited is a hard constraint, and it makes you think hard because you know that solutions won’t come to you by magic. There is the book, you, and nothing else. When you have an opened database you can always hope that your answer will come to you…one day, one way or another, typically in the next game you are going to look at. And since there are more games than what you can see in your all life you may search outside of you for the eternity.
Leaving a work perpetually opened (the ever “under construction” websites) can also be used as a tactics (consciously or not) to dodge critics. It is not done until its over right? And like Penelope working on her shroud forever, we can always find reasons not to finish the work and dodge accountability of our own ideas.
This idea that we are living in an essentially borderless culture just occurred to me. I still have much to think about it. Having an open process for thinking of course is important but it should not become the only way to think as I am afraid it is becoming. There is a case to be made to deliver finished products: at what rate, under what circumstances are questions that merit maybe a dual book of K. Popper’s “The open society and its enemies”. Something along the lines of “The borderless culture and its allies”.