Eternal Sunshine Day

Today should be a holiday.

Today, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes out on DVD.

Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy

(In classic form, it is pouring today. And I didn't bring my umbrella, so I got drenched walking to class. That's *totally* deep, man.)

Rachel asked me two weeks ago why I like the film so much, noting that I really don't share much in common with the main character. So, let me count the ways...

-It deals with the nature and vagaries of memory. I connect heavily with ANYTHING dealing with memory issues because mine is so fundamentally screwy. [mental note: write a post about your memory issues] I can still remember Hanna Neuschwander's phone number from 1997 and have tremendous recollection of the vagaries of Sierra Club/SSC history, but I have virtually no memory of my childhood, etc.

-I may not relate too much to Joel Barrish (shy, quiet type isn't really my niche), but Clem has real echoes of a high school-aged TW. And, sad as it is to say at age 25, that remains the dominant love story in my life.

-It's just such incredible filmmaking.

-There's a quiet absurdism to the film. It was more pronounced in Charlie Kaufman's earlier films (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), which made me enjoy them thoroughly, but it is subsumed just enough in this one to make it watchable over and over and over again.

-The opinion it has on the nature of love is dead-on. That last interaction, where she says that he'll realize she isn't perfect and she'll get bored, and he responds "okay..." perfectly encapsulates my personal feelings on love. There isn't a one true love, nothing is perfect, love doesn't conquer all. But we need it and we work through it.

Alright, gotta finish another chapter then go spend two hours discussing books and articles that I don't understand. Happy Eternal Sunshine day, don't forget your umbrella.

Old Friends

So I was flying out to San Francisco on Thursday for the Board meeting, and as I'm about to get on the connecting flight through Chicago, Elizabeth Hagan walks up and says hello! For those who don't know, I first met Elizabeth in '96 when we were students together at the SSC summer training program. We served on SSC excom together for three years, I think, and she was the person who put together the original Public Lands Action Summit. Hadn't seen her since 2001, then all of a sudden we get 5 hours together on a flight! I haven't written yet about "changing gears" and the sheer quantity of stress that induces in my life [note to self: write a blog entry about changing gears at some point], but suffice it to say this led to the easiest transition I've had in years.

I got back yesterday night, and after being home for about an hour, Laurel called. Turns out she and Top (yes, her fiance's name is "Top," just go with it) are driving through Philly on Monday night and thus we get to hang out. Laurel, by the way, is one of my all-time favorite people. She's one of those episodic friends (note to self: write a blog entry about episodic friends at some point) who you just know and feel comfortable with implicitly. So now I'm waiting for them to arrive, in fact they just called and are looking for parking! Thus I abruptly end this entry.

Anyway, point is there's this tremendous feeling associated with old great friends suddenly appearing. I think I need to do that more often. Maybe it's associated with getting older, but it seems like forming deep, lasting bonds with new friends talks a prohibitive amount of work. There is, of course, a line from Kicking and Screaming that perfectly enunciates this idea: Otis: "What, he's a friend of mine..."
Max: "What about me? You've got enough friends, a new one is bad for you. You start spreading your affection around and it runs thin, believe me."

Web groups versus real groups: Example 2

So the next related thought (want to get all this on paper before I read the next chapter) is What Can't You Do on the Web?

Weinberger falls victim to the phenomenon Jerry Mander talks about in "The Absence of the Sacred" -- the purveyors of a new technology trumpet all of its positive values, meanwhile there is no discussion of how it will negatively affect society. Would we have chosen the automobile or the television if we had a crystal ball and could see all the ways that it would change society? Maybe. But the point is, the debate never occurs. Technological innovation happens and we are just swept along by it. So while the web changes everything, what can't it do.

You can't eat on the web (but you can get recipes or order groceries).
You can't drink on the web (but you can order Absinthe from Europe).
You can't dance on the web (but you can talk with other dancers at swingoutdc.com)
You can't fuck on the web (but you can find a date or find waaaaaaay too much free porn)
You can't hike on the web (but you can find pictures of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area)
You can't create political change on the web (though this may be up for debate)

The list goes on. The point is that the web is and will always be virtual. And it is no replacement for the real world. Human beings need to eat and drink and dance and make love. We need to interact with the real world and, if we want to change our society, we cannot do it purely through signing e-petitions and writing angry blogs.

This is why I found the web so useless for so long. But things are changing. And the place where they are changing is at the margins. Consider the Dean campaign phenomenon: there is no doubt that it would not and could not have happened without the World Wide Web. But what made the meetups so important was that they bridged the gap between the virtual world and the real world. In the virtual world, people connected with each other based on their interests. If this had just led to a lot of e-mailing (as it would have 5 years ago, because the web had not evolved enough yet), it wouldn't have meant much. But these people then decided to take action together in the real world. So 5,000 people showed up in NYC to support Dean months before political ralies ought to be attracting such attention.

The same thing is true of swingoutdc. When I started posting on that site, I found my connections to the DC swing dance community get much thicker. On the dance floor, there was very little conversation -- especially between guys. We didn't talk politics or current events or anything else. The forum let us develop new levels of interaction, as well as providing an excellent organizing tool ("Where is everyone going Saturday night? K2 or Glen Echo?") But the margins were what made it important. If I never went out dancing, swingoutdc would hold basically no value for me. It wouldn't make me a better dancer, it wouldn't build much of a community of friends, it would just be a bunch of strangers arguing back and forth about whatever.

This is where I think the great advances are going to come, and it's where the Sierra Club needs to focus its attention. Virtual tools can transcend traditional barriers of space and time (time because you can respond to a posting at your leisure -- you don't have to be present to take part in the conversation). As such they can be a multiplier for real-world group development. But the most vibrant groups, I think, still will have some basis in the real world.

There are at least two more subjects I'm going to want to cover in this thread. One is the Friendster phenomenon -- many things on the web are only useful if a lot of people are using them -- and the other is existing internet-based political organizing. After that, who knows, maybe I'll find some answers, maybe I'll find some more questions, or maybe I'll move to another topic entirely...

Web groups versus real groups: Example 1

I'm reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined, by David Weinberger right now. It's probably going to be the last non-academic (or at least non-academically-assigned) reading I get to do for awhile. It's supposed to be the Marshall McLuhan of the web. Got interested in it after reading Joe Trippi's book, which was pretty much revolutionary for me. Open source organizing, man, yeah. I don't know what it means for the Sierra Club yet, but I will.

Anyway, the first few chapters didn't have me too impressed, but today I got to the one on Togetherness and things started clicking. Weinberger writes, "the Web is about groups -- people who, in one way or another, can look into another's eyes. Groups are the heart of the Web. (pg 105)" He goes on to argue that the web is revolutionizing groups.

It IS revolutionizing groups, no doubt. What I'm trying to work out is the HOW of it. I've already seen and experienced how the growth of the web can/does undermine traditional organizations. Communications in MCSEA is the classic example. When I was in high school, every week we had the meaty task of calling all of our members (50-75 phone calls) and reminding them of the weekend meeting/other events happening during the week. This gave us a headcount of who to potentially expect, but more importantly, it was a tremendous organizational development tool. First off, each week I would select the dozen or so calls I was going to make. I'd pick new members, people who'd recently missed meetings, or people who seemed up-and-coming in the group. Those phone conversations let me hear what they thought of the organization and let me build social capital simply by joking around with each of them for awhile. Beyond that, the rest of the calls provided an easily-accesible and yet still vital task for other members of the group. Every Problem Is an Organizing Opportunity. The problem of making massive numbers of calls was essential to healthy group development.

E-mail changed all that. In its later years, MCSEA (and every other student enviro group I've seen), discarded phone trees for e-mail alerts. E-mail alerts were quick and easy, they seemed like an ideal answer to the meeting-reminder problem. But the group lost a lot from this. There is no two-way interaction from e-mail alerts. They are just as easy to ignore as they are to send. They get lost in the clutter, the background noise, that infests the World Wide Web. And, most importantly, solving the problem eliminates a dynamic organizing opportunity. I've counseled people at every organizational development training that I've run: "use phone calls, not e-mail!" But it does no good. Everyone is fundamentally busy. Now that the short cut is so easily available (and socially expected), only the most Luddite organizers are going to resist it.

Anyway, for years I've been one of the Luddites, finding the development of the web and web-based groups to be a tremendous drain on traditional organizing and social capital in general. But with the rise of moveon and meetup, along with blogs and bulletin boards like swingoutdc, I'm starting to wonder. The web isn't going away. It's going to continue to develop and evolve into a crucial piece of people's lives. Soon, organizations that don't get the web will be like organizations that don't get television or radio: their capacity will be limited to extremely cottage industries. What's more, organizations that embrace web evolution will still face real danger because each new development undermines fundamental assumptions. Web entrepreneurs are quickly discovering new things web-based groups can do, but what can't internet-based groups do? What natural functions of geographically-based groups are lost or displaced in the webworld and how do you make up for them?

Seems like the beginning of a genuine research question to me. It sits on the frontier of our knowledge, challenges us to consider First Principles, and offers the opportunity to change the world...