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When Digital And Analog Don’t Coincide

October 25th, 2009 by AV Flox in intarwebz

Ali: Are you usually this friendly with strangers?
She: Always.
Ali: Any particular reason?
She: A stranger is a safe place. You can tell a stranger anything.
Ali: Suppose I put it in my book.
She: You write fiction.
Ali: So?
She: So you won’t tie me to the facts.
Ali: But I might tell the truth.
She: Facts never tell the truth. Even the simplest facts are misleading.
Ali: Like the times of the trains.
She: And how many lovers you’ve had.

Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook

If there is any phrase that summarizes what enabled us to advance as far as we have, it’s “question everything.” Yet as more information becomes available to us via the web, we wander farther and farther away from this concept. Lost? Google Maps. Doubt? Wikipedia. New crush? Google.

This would be excellent if the information available to us was always accurate. The problem is that it isn’t and we’re no longer used to doubting all data until verified. The problem with the disparity between the digital and analog was illustrated perfectly today by Dr. Mark Drapeau, adjunct faculty member in the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In a post on his Posterous, he detailed an incident at Washington’s Union Station, where he was boarding an Amtrak train.

An abridged excerpt:

A few weeks ago, someone installed new screens around Union Station that give gates and updated information about trains. You know, “On Time,” “Boarding,” and so forth. You can find summary boards around the train station, and individual boards near the gates. They’re coordinated, and most likely run by some central software.

As we were running a few minutes late to board, the automatic screen at the gate switched from “On Time” to “Boarding.” Except we weren’t boarding at all. The attendant said it would be just a few minutes, and the door was shut with a fabric rope. The attendant went in the back with his walkie talkie to check on something and we quietly stood by the gate, about a hundred of us.

Suddenly, we hear a shriek. A middle-aged woman is running at us, yelling about how her train is boarding, hurdling over people and their bags. “Where’s the train to Newport News?! My train is boarding!!” Before anyone could say two words to her, she quickly glanced at the sign that said “Boarding,” tore off the fabric barrier, barged through the door, and started running towards the escalator to the train.

This is a good example of how updated technology not only can be merely a cosmetic improvement, but also can be harmful when used improperly. In this case, Amtrak personnel clearly knew we were not boarding, yet the signs said we were.

In the minds of people these days, virtual boarding is as good as the truth, and we saw this with the middle-aged woman, who ran by a hundred people waiting to board because a digital display convinced her that her train was boarding.

This is a similar problem to the “celebrity death hoax” phenomena whereby Kanye West or a similar high-profile person is declared “RIP” by an enterprising Twitter user–and the information spreads like wildfire. Being dead on Twitter is now equivalent to actually being dead, unless you literally “resurrect” yourself via a YouTube video (Zach Braff) or a late-night TV appearance (Jeff Goldblum).

Today’s incident could have been prevented in a number of ways. It was very minor, but it serves as an example of what happens when half-assed technology is involuntarily injected into our daily lives by people we don’t know, who don’t care about us. If we don’t have standards about making digital information match reality, where does that logically leave society? Working bathrooms declared closed? Incorrect pricing on lattes? Misleading highway directions during an emergency?

What I want to know is: Who’s going to be in charge of coordinating the digital and the real as our country moves toward a more technocratic future?

It’s a loaded question. One of the greatest aspects of the internet is the freedom with which it provides us. Coordination would require regulation. Do you draw the line at stations and airports providing information? Doesn’t it logically follow that any resource offering information (be it medical, historical and scientific) should comply? And so would the content provided by citizen journalists who are more and more providing the information for their communities. What would this regulation look like? More importantly, how would it be enforced?

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One Response to “When Digital And Analog Don’t Coincide”

Masha
November 10th, 2009 at 4:43 am

So interesting.
I suppose its just the old problem of “if its written, it must be true” writ large. We would probably have more luck in teaching critical thinking skills than trying to force compliance.
What would that even mean, and who would decide what is accurate, according to which cultural standard?

I’m finding more and more examples of this type of thing – where a system that is supposed to support us end up distorting the way we do things because that is the easiest, most efficient or most manageable way to set up the system. You see it all the time, and I think it has very deep seated effect upon us. What do you fill in on your tax form as your occupation? How does that affect how you think about yourself or present yourself to others?
Masha´s last blog ..The Hunting of the Last Dragon by Sherryl Jordan

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When Digital And Analog Don’t Coincide

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