Audio Attitude

My attic is filled with boxes again.  Every once in a while I sort through boxes and get rid of a lot of stuff I no longer need but I always manage to fill more boxes with junk that seems valuable at the moment.  All these boxes got me thinking about how boxes are so much a part of my daily existence.  I work in an office box.  I stop for coffee at a little coffee box.  My computers are boxes.  My Pocket PC cell phone is a box.  And inside each device are more boxes of folders, files, applications that are close to impossible to manage efficiently.  It all generally becomes junk in a box.

Remember the "Dick in a Box" Saturday Night Live music video featuring the former boy band singer guy?  If you haven’t seen the video, treat yourself to a viewing and then come back and we’ll talk about it. 

I thought the sketch was satire about male narcissism but I now think it could be a metaphor for the Internet.  Think about it.  Chat services, email providers, podcast networks, picture sharing sites, wireless carriers, cell phone and computer equipment makers, and social sites are coming on to us shaking their boxes while fancy dancing.  I used to think the Internet would evolve into an easier way to communicate, network, and exchange ideas and information.  I’m not so sure.  This wave of social Internet seems to be less about relationships than giving good box.

In this frenzied pace we find ourselves living we never seem to find enough of the two things we each need –freedom to pursue our individual potentials, and to matter to somebody.  Not feeling it?  No problem.  We do a pretty good job faking it, don’t we?  All financial dealings can be traced to filling our basic needs or pretending to do so.  Companies are betting billions on their dance.  So far it seems to be working.  Millions of us are focused on all the boxes.  I certainly get my share.

Don’t you see a problem here?  How would you describe the relationship between the guys in the SNL sketch shaking their special gift packages and the girls acting like lucky winners?  What do you think will happen to the couples?  Loyalty?  Fidelity?  And if you run a company whose mission is to profit from developing content, applications, or tools for Internet users, which would you prefer in the long term – a relationship with loyal customers, or a dance competition?

Are all these boxes necessary to connect with the people who matter to us?  I can’t blame my friends and family for choosing a different chat box or social networking site than the ones I use.  But why must we sign up to every damned site, turn over personal information for marketing purposes, learn each site’s unique features, and go through whatever version of "friending" that site requires just to connect?  I mean isn’t that the silliest possible use of this technology?  I thought we learned our lesson back in the day when telephoning the neighbor was long distance if they had a different telephone service.  It was a stupid idea then and its stupid now.

Do we want an Internet that helps us expand and strengthen our social network or are we just messing around with one another?  If we want relationships, we need to move beyond the box mentality and open up.  Instead of fancier wrapping, I hope for some simple elegance for all Internet users.  To web entrepreneurs:  Please stop with the proprietary group-groping-to-win-market-share-for-a-quickie attitude. Stop shaking your boxes at us unless you really mean business.

Sometimes junk in a box is just junk in a box.

(My thanks to Jason Kottke for the image used in this post)