Connectivity vs Serendipity: Going off the Grid at SXSWi

On arriving in Austin for South By South West Interactive the first thing I noticed was everyone walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones as you might expect. Legions of geeks bumping into each other and random objects while trying to walk while checking in on Twitter, Facebook FourSquare, GoWalla, Gmail, etc. It was kinda hilarious and frightening at first.

Seeing all these tech zombies, and being one myself, woke me a up to how fast we are adopting new technology and related gadgets without any consideration for their potential negative impact on our lives.

Are our brains wired for this? Is mobile facilitating meaningful conversations or just more conversations? Was something broken that mobile technology has fixed?

Is connectivity superior to serendipity? Remember serendipity? That’s when you just go and let things happen. No SMS/Tweets/Emails/Calls to guide you. Remember about 10 years ago? That’s what I’m talking about. Somehow we all survived and had a pretty good time back then, at least I did.

After a couple days of trying to keep up with the crowd I realized I was approaching borderline OCD about my phone, even more than normal- what’s happening, who’s sending me a text/email/dm, what’s the hottest thing, gotta check out GoWalla, gotta tweet what this guy just said,  gotta download this app, visit this site, take this picture/video… on and on.

I was spending more time interacting with my phone than I was with the real live people around me. And this was pretty much the same with them as well. We all came to this event hoping to connect with each other but instead of having conversations we were retweeting each other’s comments. We sat in fascinating sessions run by some of the most interesting people in the world paying half attention while we fiddled on our phone, deceiving ourselves into thinking we could effectively multitask and get meaning from the session at the same time. Total BS.

I felt like I was getting a glimpse of augmented reality and it kinda freaked me out. Are we meant to be part robot? Shouldn’t we check back into our blank state and see if it was really so bad that we needed to add all these gadgets and services to it?

So I decided to go without my iPhone or computer for 24 hours. I wanted to see how a day at SXSWi without technology (at least personal technology) would compare with being constantly connected. I decided to give “old school” serendipity at try. The experiment started on Sunday morning and ended Monday morning. I wanted to throw myself on the waves and see where they took me.

So I checked in with my family, posted a notice to some friends via Twitter and SMS and turned off the phone. Then I gave my phone to John Wechsler (@wechsler) from FormSpring (FormStack now I think since they are rebranding the parent company due to the Formspring.me explosion which is awesome) who I was hanging out with at the Exact Target/CoTweet event at WholeFood’s headquarters Sunday morning when our conversation lead to this decision. John’s a great guy and although I haven’t known him long I liked and trusted him with my “precious”. Then I was off the grid. It felt a little like a trust fall and I was really nervous at first.

Without going into the minute to minute details of the day I want to touch on some of the key experiences and take aways. After getting over my initial freak out over losing my phone I started loosening up quickly. It was really liberating. A sense of real freedom overtook me at times. I felt like a dog off the leash. I wandered around, got lost, met people, hooked up with friends and then followed them until I would run into other friends and then followed them. I went to about 5 parties and ate some of the best barbacue in the world. I drank a lot of free beer. I made deeper connections with people I already knew. I had a great day, probably the best day of the conference and every day has been excellent (so far).

But it wasn’t all good. I felt lonely and disconnected at times, even confused and disoriented. I had phantom vibrations in my legs and would reach for my phone. I would have seconds of panic thinking I’d lost it. I kept reaching for it when uncomfortable, lost, curious to look something up or just needed to know the time (see side thought on clocks below).

I felt a little like I’d lost one of my senses. It took a little while for my other senses to strengthen to accommodate for the loss. If we can consider connectivity a sense I wonder if our human minds can accommodate the use of this sense at the increasing rate we tech zombies are employing it. Maybe that’s the real cause of so-called SXSW SARS? Perhaps a question for another blog.

The general take away from the experiment was that we don’t need all these gadgets and services to communicate, congregate and experience life. Seems a little obvious, doesn’t it, but why are we so hooked? Life can happen without them and can actually be a richer experience. Sure, they add value at times but maybe not as much as we think. Sometimes I think they take more than they give. Sometimes we need to impose and embrace constraints. We need to value quality of experiences over quantity.

In discussing my experiences I got a lot of feedback that this might be a movement to pursue for next year- a “Leave The Phone At Home” Sunday next SXSWi. I think many people resonated with the reasons for me undertaking the experiment and guess what, nothing horrible happened! In fact I would argue many people would have a better experience on account of embracing this constraint. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this idea. I could have our Small Box team put together a website and help coordinate an effort to encourage people to take a day off, give serendipity a shot, see how things go. Why not go off the grid for a day at SXSWi 2011?

Technology is moving so fast. Yes, it is fun and exciting but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s take the time now and then to hit the reset button. Our human nature is not, and cannot, change as fast as the technology we are plugging into our “system”. Before we get too far down the path and adopt technology that could be harmful let’s remember to take time out and reflect on what all this means.

Shout Out- SXSWi is a completely unique and amazing experience. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in web/interactive/social media etc check it out next year. I consider it a life changing experience.
The Indiana crew here has been a complete blast and loads of fun to hang out with. Big shout outs to Kristian Andersen Associates (the reason I went in the first place, lunch with Kristian), Blue Lock, Sprout Box, Exact Target/CoTweet, PocketTales, CauseLab/Scott Henderson (awesome roomie), MediaSauce/Mitch Maxson (also awesome roomie), FAWM.org/Burr Settles, James Paden/Vibrant Solutions, Blast Media, FormSpring and I’m sure I’m missing some others. Would love to see an even bigger Indiana presence next year (holla ChaCha!). Indiana is definitely on the map here and people know it. I love that.

Side Thought- Not knowing the time was the most unexpected byproduct of not having my phone. Since everyone has a phone now there are fewer public clocks, like fewer pay phones- it would be interesting to do a study to see if they have declined at a similar rate- on top of that I started this right after DST had taken place and many clocks (the hotel clock for instance) hadn’t been changed. I missed a panel on company culture, showing up right on time, at least according to the hotel clock, to see it was wrapping up.