Tell me about couples and surfing!
May. 30th, 2006 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm about to write my next Wired column. I've decided it's going to be about the effect of information addiction on the life of couples. And I'd like your help, because I don't want it just to be me going on about me. But naturally it starts with me, what I've observed in my own life. Here's a photo of me and my then-girlfriend (she's now happily married to someone else) Shizu, back in 2002.
We're sitting at breakfast, each glued to our iBooks. Now, I'm not sure if there's anything "wrong" with this picture. If we were reading newspapers, nobody would think it terribly strange. We're both nerdy people who thrive on a constant flow of information. Not all of our life together was spent staring at a computer screen. But quite a lot of it was.
In a sense it was a life-saver: crammed together in a tiny Tokyo apartment, our iBooks gave us a sense of "electronic personal space" which filled out the limited physical space. Each screen was like a virtual private room we could retreat into.
But I'm also interested in the problems that "information couples" run into. I know that I don't really watch TV any more. I'm online all the time. But whereas a couple watching TV, curled up on a sofa together, may have felt "together", a couple surfing on two wifi laptops are visiting different sites, having different experiences. They seem more apart than together. The internet age feels less communal than the TV age did.
So how does surfing impact on your relationship? Is one of you more info-addicted than the other? If so, is there a sense that the less-addicted partner is some kind of "information widow" (or widower)? Bereaved by the internet? Does one of you have more to do online than the other? Does the first one to be bored online dictate some offline activities, or does the one who wants to stay online longest make the other one click around aimlessly for hours?
What about surfing as a form of sociability: do you e-mail each other interesting website addresses? Do you tend to visit the same kinds of sites? I know that when Hisae and I are surfing, language divides us: I'm visiting English-language sites, she's on Japanese ones. But quite a lot of our interaction is me asking her for explanations of things, Japanese stuff I don't understand. When that's going on, we'll either bring up the same page on two machines, or huddle around one. It's actually more sociable than TV. (Of course, maybe the TV is on at the same time.)
What about more dubious areas: are you secretly looking at porn with your partner right there in the room? Are you flirting with someone else, messaging someone? Because the weird thing about this technology is that it makes what's distant seem closer than what's close. Absent people can have more presence than present people. Or do you look at porn together? What about YouTube videos? Is surfing turning back into TV-watching?
What's the sound of a couple surfing? Dead silence, broken only by the sound of two tapping keyboards (quite a pleasant sound, actually)? Is music playing, and if so, who chooses it? Is choosing which iTunes accesses the sound sticks via Airport Express the new fight for the TV remote?
And how close or far apart are you physically when you surf? Are you lying on the same sofa, legs intertwined, laptops touching lids, or sitting at opposite ends of the house on imposing desktops?
Tell me about couples and surfing. I'd like, if I may, to use some of your comments in my Wired piece, so please tell me your full name (or the name you'd like to be known by in the piece). If your comments are off the record, say so. And if you don't want your partner to know you're spilling the beans to Momus, tilt your screen away now.
We're sitting at breakfast, each glued to our iBooks. Now, I'm not sure if there's anything "wrong" with this picture. If we were reading newspapers, nobody would think it terribly strange. We're both nerdy people who thrive on a constant flow of information. Not all of our life together was spent staring at a computer screen. But quite a lot of it was.
In a sense it was a life-saver: crammed together in a tiny Tokyo apartment, our iBooks gave us a sense of "electronic personal space" which filled out the limited physical space. Each screen was like a virtual private room we could retreat into.
But I'm also interested in the problems that "information couples" run into. I know that I don't really watch TV any more. I'm online all the time. But whereas a couple watching TV, curled up on a sofa together, may have felt "together", a couple surfing on two wifi laptops are visiting different sites, having different experiences. They seem more apart than together. The internet age feels less communal than the TV age did.
So how does surfing impact on your relationship? Is one of you more info-addicted than the other? If so, is there a sense that the less-addicted partner is some kind of "information widow" (or widower)? Bereaved by the internet? Does one of you have more to do online than the other? Does the first one to be bored online dictate some offline activities, or does the one who wants to stay online longest make the other one click around aimlessly for hours?
What about surfing as a form of sociability: do you e-mail each other interesting website addresses? Do you tend to visit the same kinds of sites? I know that when Hisae and I are surfing, language divides us: I'm visiting English-language sites, she's on Japanese ones. But quite a lot of our interaction is me asking her for explanations of things, Japanese stuff I don't understand. When that's going on, we'll either bring up the same page on two machines, or huddle around one. It's actually more sociable than TV. (Of course, maybe the TV is on at the same time.)
What about more dubious areas: are you secretly looking at porn with your partner right there in the room? Are you flirting with someone else, messaging someone? Because the weird thing about this technology is that it makes what's distant seem closer than what's close. Absent people can have more presence than present people. Or do you look at porn together? What about YouTube videos? Is surfing turning back into TV-watching?
What's the sound of a couple surfing? Dead silence, broken only by the sound of two tapping keyboards (quite a pleasant sound, actually)? Is music playing, and if so, who chooses it? Is choosing which iTunes accesses the sound sticks via Airport Express the new fight for the TV remote?
And how close or far apart are you physically when you surf? Are you lying on the same sofa, legs intertwined, laptops touching lids, or sitting at opposite ends of the house on imposing desktops?
Tell me about couples and surfing. I'd like, if I may, to use some of your comments in my Wired piece, so please tell me your full name (or the name you'd like to be known by in the piece). If your comments are off the record, say so. And if you don't want your partner to know you're spilling the beans to Momus, tilt your screen away now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-30 01:11 pm (UTC)1. We email each other constantly during the day, which is a nice break from work, but not nearly as distracting (or as likely to get us in trouble) as phone calls would be.
2. I think the fact that we have both have livejournals have brought us and our respective circles of friends closer together. Now, when I meet a friend of my lovers for the first time, I already know quite a bit about how they will be. I think that makes for easier social interaction.
3. as far as the bad, I think my lover would prefer it if I wasn't checking blog at two in the morning in my underwear, and thinks its a little creepy that I talk about people I have never met in person as friends
this is a great idea for an article, I look forward to seeing it.
I'm the other half
Date: 2006-05-30 02:04 pm (UTC)Emailing a lot during the day is great. I love checking in with him about how our days are going. It's made us closer as a couple and I think allowed us to have more substantive conversations when we actually see each other when we both get home.
I think it also helps us to get our work done. We both have fulltime jobs and are in school and this allows us to do our work, but also spend time together. And we use each other as sounding boards as we work alongside each other.
A big difference for me is that when I get home or on weekends, unless I have to, I don't really want to spend a lot of time on the laptop after doing it all day at work, while he could spend hours surfing. I'd rather do other things, read, cook, ride bikes, clean house, etc. But, I think we've come to accept this about each other and it works out alright.
LJ has been a fun way to share each others thoughts, values, and friends. Funny, I may have thought that thinking of online friends as real friends was a little strange at first, but as I've gone more online (much at his inspiration), I've seen how people can form a community w/out ever meeting each other in real life.