Technology that (dis)connects our world…
Hurried WiFi use between meetings at Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto, July, 2009
Today I was informed by a WiFi user who I discovered through my Twitter research (thanks @ccano) of Barnes & Noble’s move towards offering free WiFi access in all of their stores. Previously a fee was charged for access through AT&T much like the case of Starbucks. At first I dismissed the news story as just another retailer publicising the addition of WiFi to their stores. After all, we all know that offering free WiFi is an affordable way of attracting and catering for customers – Independent cafes have been doing so for years. However, after visiting the Barnes & Noble page advertising the addition of WiFi I was struck by the use of language.
“We have always wanted our stores to feel like home—a place where people can relax, explore and connect with ideas and each other at their leisure. So it is only natural that, in today’s world, we want our customers to enjoy complimentary Wi-Fi. You can explore the world the way you always have at Barnes & Noble with the technology that connects us to the world today.”
In today’s technologically driven world where being online plays such an important role in our lives, it is often argued that the use of certain technologies in public can be disrupting to social life; People talking on their mobile phones are disengaged from the public life around them – iPod users are tuning out of the conversations on the bus – Cafe patrons on laptops barely take the time to look up and acknowledge their server or surroundings.
While I’m aware it is advertising hyperbole coming from one of the worlds major corporations, but the text struck a chord with me – WiFi use is indeed part of our lives, not disconnecting us from the world around us, rather, connecting us to our world as we know it. As I read it I was sitting as I so often do conducting observations at Yonge-Dundas Square, a major free public WiFi spot in Toronto. Barnes & Noble are acknowledging the ways offering WiFi allows people to “connect with ideas and eath other” through a “technology that connects us to the world“.
It’s a pleasant thought, as I sit here watching people on laptops or glancing back and forth between their friends, surroundings and their iPhone displays. Although to me, the observer in physical public space, these actions may seem disengaged or unhealthy for maintaining a vibrant public realm, perhaps to them, the WiFi presents the opportunity for being connected to others and really taking part in their world around them. Simple observations or even interviews don’t let me the researcher into that world. Well, not as much as I’d like to be. Turning to Twitter and beginning to think about online ethnographies is helping me get there.
In a world where my conceptial theoretical understandings tell me the digital cannot be separated from the physical, and public not kept neatly aside of private. In a world where my practical real life experiences tell me that being in a city space can be invisibly (to some) online as much as visibly (physically) present – I’m becoming increasingly aware that where methodology takes place is important. When seeking to understand spatial practices as the geographer does – place indeed makes a difference to methodology.
I promise I’ll keep thinking this through more. Heck – I’m just glad I broke a month of ill health and silence on this blog.
