Stowaway Data: Datachondria at 50 Posts

Time for a recap of sorts as we hit our 50th post. We’ve written a great deal about books, but also about other media from film and album cover art right through to the humble business card. With more than six months under the bridge, a number of themes have emerged.

Human relationships in the 20th century were, in delicate and subtle ways, managed in part by the values we grafted onto objects produced and distributed by traditional — industrial — processes. These personal metadata were ‘stowaways’. We didn’t necessarily mean to tell people about ourselves by reading Infinite Jest on the subway — but glances were stolen and judgments were made nonetheless.

These communications were essential to enable some basic interactions. Flirting. Dating. Partying. Business networking. With these incidental transmission channels closing down as we consume content in new ways, we’re going to have to renegotiate, collectively, experimentally, how we communicate. Cultural objects — business cards, book covers, shared music experiences — no longer function in the same way. What does it mean for our relationships? Will we, now, be bowling together — or bowling aloner?

And so we’ve been thinking and writing about the conversations we are now beginning to have — about how to converse.

• How are new friends supposed to judge the prospects of our relationship when we don’t have CDs displayed in the living room?
• Is it rude to withhold the password to your wifi network from your dinner guests?
• Why are smartphones still more or less phone-shaped?
• How will you know who to hit on when you can’t see what anyone’s reading on their Kindle?
• Are boomers and MP3-raised kids going to lose their hearing at the same time? How will this impact music production techniques?
• How does commentary and criticism work when we’re being sold to by algorithms that can operate profitably without coercing us to consume in common?
• Is Twitter an appropriate reference check for a job interview? A classified ad?
• Does Last.fm herald the end of the musical “guilty pleasure”?
• Is it rude to tweet what you wouldn’t say out loud?
• What would music look like if we could classify it as we really experienced it?
• What can pedometers tell us about how we will read in the future?
• If you could interlink books, music, film, photographs, and the world around you, would you ever leave the house?

Along the way, we’ve written about everything from the perils and pleasures of filter failure, the transformative effects of audiobooks, and how Twitter dissolves cognitive dissonance. Along with much, much more.

We’ve also made at least two Lebowski references. This seems shockingly low. We promise to redress over the next 50 posts. Thanks for sticking with us.