Yesterday a sign that read "out of order"was posted on one of the office copy machines. This morning another sign joined it reading "service has been called." I was tempted to add a third sign, "when will they come?" This would in essence create a fully functioning, all accessible message board, taking place right on one of our own office copy machines (talk about using a device for something completely different than what the developer origianlly designed it for).
This happening reminded me of similar instances I was witness to in middle school. One day a message of some kind appeared on the boys' bathroom wall, nothing inappropriate or crude, just a message, something like, "this is the nicer of the bathrooms in the school." Seriously, just that simple, like a prophetic view into the furture world of facebook and twitter messages each of us is barraged with each hour (there being only about 1% we actually care to read, but end up reading them all because they're so short. In a way, facebook and twitter have tricked us into engaging in small talk. After about 20 seconds going through my facebook page a cold sweat begins as I realize I have become engaged in not only one small talk based converation but several, and to make matters worse each thread has nothing to do with the others. The only thing worse than small talk is disjointed banter small talk which is usually reserved for the homeless guy you were tricked into listening to, but that's a whole other post).
A message appeared on the bathroom wall and the next day, another message was found beneath the original. Over the next week the "threads" multiplied, some in reply to the original, others to other replies, and still others began entire new rabbit trails into completely new topics. Lines ran through the scribbles and around the quickly scrawled middle school musings connecting "posts" to their correct responses.
The frequency of bathroom breaks spiked that week (the why unknown to the faculty). A visit to the restroom became a visit to the message board to see if any agreements or snide comments had been added to your previous day's insight. An odd happenstance to all this is, at least for me, I never witnessed anyone actively writing on the wall. It was as if, subconciously and in perfect Jungian syncrotism, we visited the bathroom one by one, alone, to write our thoughts in anonaminity.
Then, one day, not unlike the corporations that step into society's social networks and attempt to present and sell the people with some template, some "correct" place and style of communicating, that that corporation may then make money off, inevitably and sadly, one day walking into the bathroom I was met with the janitor painting over the masterpiece, mumbling to himself as he silenced the voices of the students in a few short strokes of a paint roller. We looked in horror at the white, emptiness that was once a vibrant forest of thoughts, evolving into a single idea, maybe a revolution.
We shook our fists in the air in protest (silently, as no one knew who had written on the wall and no one would tell of their own bathroom musings for fear of taking on the punishment of the whole). "You, establishment (the vocab word that week), can't sell communication, you can't stop it simply because you don't benefit!" If you cap the top, it will ooze out the sides, if you shut out the light, it will grope in the dark and find another and another until it has rebuilt itself, independent and without you.
Those who will succeed in the tech/communitcation growth are those that look at the wall, spattered with middle school penmanship and see not a mess or vandalism but an evolution. Who will then take that and say, "yes, this is what it has become and is becomming, how can I help its expansion?"
Posts
