Full Circle Associates

A couple of years ago my friend Jon Lebkowsky was curating a series of panels at SXSW about digital convergence. I remember say, "what's that?" Jon patiently explained and I intellectually understood.

But that's not the way my brain works.

I have to live things first. Experience is essential to advance my thinking about something. A term, a concept can float around in my head for ages. Then zap, it connects with an experience and everything changes. Sometimes that change is in the moment. Some times it emerges slowly.

Somehow today I found myself at the McLeod Residence Blog and had this moment of resonance. This endeavor, the combined brainchild of a high tech developer and an artist (at least that is their stated primary self identifiers) seeks to bring together people and experiences. Well, and things too, like art, and drinks. High tech and art. It seems like a vibrant and wonderful effort. It reminded me of the cool stuff that people like Henry Jenkins are writing about convergence culture.

This got me thinking about things that converge in my life. For the longest time I stated that I did not separate work and play, or work and the rest of my life. I declared that I liked my work so much it was my life. My online and offline lives intersected. I prided myself on weaving everything into a whole. Or so I thought. Did the online overtake the offline? Did I stop going to places like the McLeod Residence?

I got to wondering, is there such a thing as over convergence? When we think of technology, the buzz is how all our devices converge, how digitized content can be zipped to our phones, TVs and computers. "Always on." I read the headlines from CES in Las Vegas and I think, what is the impact of this convergence on our lives? On our selves? What is the dark side of digital convergence?

I've noticed for me it is about habits. Now this is a bit to the side of digital convergence, but it is how I've let the patterns of digital convergence overtake me. How the ease and availability of digital content in all its forms starts to dominate my life. I slip into patterns of convergence (or divergence) not out of intention, but through the accretion of tiny patterns that become habits. Take email, for example. My email checks for new mail every 5 minutes and there is a little icon in my system tray that tells me when there is new email. Back when I didn't get a lot of email, that was an exciting little icon. I became trained to respond to it and the email.

Now I get enough email that I am challenged to responsively deal with it. But that habit of checking is still there. All the time. Every day. I could get the same email on my mobile phone, or my TV. I don't. But still, the ease is so great, it dominates beyond what it probably should. So on the weekends, I have taken to turning off my machine at least one day.

I want to diverge a bit.

My social networks and the amazing content they offer me are another habit. I read the blogs of my friends, then check on the links to blogs they like. I follow del.icio.us tags. And soon I'm awash in blogs that I genuinely like to read. But I can't read them all and still have time to bake a loaf of bread, go out to dinner with friends or go for a walk. The convergence of all these cool people via the blogosphere is too much. So I am trying to cultivate a habit of marking all my blog subscriptions as read more often. Ideally once a week, but I haven't succeeded yet. I hate to let go.

I want to diverge a bit.

I read so much online, I have let interesting books pile up. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I read electronic content differently than paper content. I think about it differently.

My husband can record so many shows that we get a backlog, but do I want to watch that much TV?

All these technological affordances allow me to do things because I simply can. I start out enthusiastically embracing, and soon my patterns are altered.

Sometimes there is value in separateness. A room quiet of machines and media. Work and play in mindful separation, rather than blind convergence. Immersion in one environment at a time.

This is not just about attention, from where I sit. Not just about fractured attention. It is about the artful mix of life in its daily patterns.

My personal lesson about digital convergence is that I should examine it with my ITENT in mind. Asking not just how, but why, needs to be a bigger part of my daily practice with my aquisition of new technologies, access to content and, well, everything.

I think I want to diverge a bit.