The Anniversary Dinner - A Story

“The young app, although not used to taking her meals this way, sat down at the table for the celebratory anniversary dinner of her grandparents. She dearly loved her grandparents, two successful web companies, and they had taught her much. She considered herself especially fortunate to have grandparents who always listened to her ideas, discussed them with her and acknowledged that she lived in times different to the ones they had grown up in.

She knew too that not all her friends were that lucky.  Many complained that they were written off as being young upstarts with no idea of what they were talking about.

Her grandparents were an exception, in that most web companies of their age, were used to presenting the data they had created to viewers who received the content passively with no ways of responding. “This is how it is; take it or leave it” was the motto often heard in the corridors of their upbringing. There were traditions that had to be followed if they were to succeed.  Search engines puffed through the countrysides of their days. 

Their brothers and sisters in the entertainment industry had known that in return for their hard work, the passive viewer could be subjected to commercials. It was the price that had to be paid to view what one was interested in. 

Also present at the dinner were her parents, both successful social websites in their different ways. It was her father who suggested that as an after dinner event they share stories of the worlds they grew up in.  Hearing circumstances and world views across generations often led to heated discussion but could also lead to better understanding. 

Social connections were the “in” thing for her parents. In their youth, they had developed emails and blogs before going on to become social websites, always however, with the aid of the trustworthy tool used by their parents - the computer.. 

Her grandparents, the 1994-2001 generation, had friends called Yahoo, Google, Amazon and eBay.  Her parents, born between 2002 and 2009 liked to hang out with guys like Facebook and LinkedIn. They ran their own blogs, posted their pics on Flickr and were recently Twitter experts. She, although only almost three years old, knew what it was to make it possible for people to communicate with each other even when away from their desktops and laptops.  She thought topless was a cool concept, much to the shock of the other generations present! 

The young app looked around her, aware that she was totally mobile.  With the aid of smartphones and tablets she could help people reach an audience and communicate with them in ways unheard of only two years ago! Mobile interaction lay at the core of what she stood for. Only yesterday she had met her cousin Instagram to discuss the benefits of being born an app.  Reachability was her second name, something that had not always been possible with computers.  Many of her friends had no intention of ever launching a website!

Some of her grandparents’ friends had tried to adapt to the times but their apps were only simple versions of the desktop experience. Some, and only some, of her parents’ friends had more easily adapted but were still trying to make the subtle shifts required of them. 

She was fully aware that the tech world was speeding up. Soon she too would bear offspring.  What the child would be she was not totally sure.  Perhaps, she thought, as she excused herself from the confines of the dinner table, she should ask Siri!”

The chances that you have just read the above story on a mobile device are great.  The concept of here2here is ever evolving and always fascinates me. 

Eric Jackson in a recent article in the Forbes Magazine has suggested that Google and Facebook might disappear in the next five to eight years. His article, which I invite you to read, set off my thinking and resulted in the above story as an alternative way of looking at technology.  

There will always be previous stages present no matter what stage a technology has reached.  That is the nature of evolution.  Learning to transcend and include what has gone before is key to healthy development and failure to do so can lead to regression. 

These are challenges that face both the creators and users of new technologies, as the evolutionary train of technology speeds up to reach what only appears to be a futuristic destination.

Linda in Wonderland

The calendar year was 2012, one hundred and fifty years since Lewis Carroll first began writing “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.  Sitting next to a stream, Alice was still pretty much aware of the fact that even though she sometimes thought she knew who she was, she was also conscious of having changed several times over the years, not to mention since that morning. Bored, she had peeped into her sister’s book, but it had no pictures or conversations. Alice found that weird.

All of a sudden, a white rabbit with iphone in hand, alarm going off rather loudly, attracted Alice’s attention. Following the sound of the alarm playing one of her favorite hits,  Alice ran after him. He passed a digital stream, and as he popped down a rabbit-hole Alice followed him further, only to find herself soon tumbling into what seemed to be a very deep well.

 

Whether the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, Alice did not know. What she did notice after a while were the symbols on the sides of the well depicting the various portals available to those entering this world of wonder. 

She did not know it yet, but by clicking on a link, the traveler in cyberspace can be transported from one place to another. By downloading an app, the user is offered tools and information unheard of before. 

As she fell, Alice remembered what she had learnt at school that week.  Her teacher, a forward thinking wonderful lady, had introduced her class to mindfulness. Sitting in a circle each morning the children focused on their breathing and the feelings they were experiencing. Alice decided that this was as good a time as ever to put this all into practice, and so, taking a deep breath, she allowed herself to be fully aware of herself, her feelings, her muddled emotions and her surroundings, which were rather strange to say the least.

She felt she must have reached the centre of the earth when she suddenly landed with a thump. She thought she spotted the white rabbit but he soon disappeared out of sight. 

Alice found herself in a room with a little table.  On it lay a tablet. To examine it she picked it up, swiped its screen and squealed with delight at what she found. There were stories with pictures that were interactive when she touched them.  There were conversations going on in real time! There were maps and dictionaries, newspapers and magazines. She could play games and even draw using her finger.

She noticed a camera and a special app and before long was taking pictures of herself which transformed her at once into someone tall, someone short, someone with a huge funny face and then someone all squashed up. She squealed with delight.

Swiping the screen yet again she found an app called Instagram. She realized that she had not landed in the centre of the earth, but was somehow in all places at once, as she watched photos from all over the world appear on her screen in real time. This was truly here2here! People commented on these photos and she noticed that many of the comments said Linda!!!

Linda? She thought her name was Alice! But then anything was possible when time was no longer linear and she felt herself so close to the other and the other felt as she.

To find out more about who she could possibly now be, she clicked on wikipedia to discover that the name Linda might be derived from the same root as the linden tree, with a German and ultimately Celtic root.  The image of the tree is often used to indicate a gentle personality. 

Alice was confused but read on. Linda could come from the “Celt Lindworm”, another variation of the mythical concept know as the ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail. The ouroboros represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. More worlds of wonder were possibly awaiting her, whether she be Alice or Linda or whoever. 

Muchalinda was also the name of a snake-like being who protected the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment.

The name Linda in Xhosa means “wait” and that perhaps made a little sense. Perhaps if she waited long enough it would all become clear to her.

This was getting curiouser and curiouser, until for now at least, it all suddenly made sense.

Linda was also used in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to mean beautiful, pretty or cute.  People on Instagram were indicating that they liked a particular photo!!!

Alice looked up and saw the Mad Hatter laughing at her. She was not sure whether time had stopped or it had been transcended. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Cheshire Cat smiling.

---

When starting this website, it was my intention to explore the concept of here2here through word and image and thereby promote a shared vision of diversity within unity. My blog and my presence on twitter are, and share, my explorations through word. To explore here2here through the use of image I have recently entered the world of Instagram.

I often feel like Alice, as a world of everyday happenings, memories and creativity appears on my screen in real time. In the gallery, “Some Instagram Pics”, you can see some of the images I have shared. If of course, you are on Instagram you can see more of these pics there. If not you can follow them here.

The image is a powerful tool and one that I believe can assist in an opening of the heart to compassion. 

 

We live in wonderful times. Wonder is there when we stop to see it. What is more, modern technology is making it possible to share these moments if we so choose.

I end with one such example. On New Year’s Eve, the Burj Khalifa, lit up with fireworks.  Standing on my balcony directly opposite the Burj Khalifa, overwhelmed at one stage by tears, I witnessed an event of beauty. You may not have been with me, but in a sense you are as I share with you a video of the event made possible through moving imagery and the world of youtube. Take a few minutes to step into this wonderland.