Casual Reflections: Designed Environments, Communities vs. Networks

Some miscellaneous thoughts today.

• HAHA do you get it? My Featured Image is a pun. Ohohoho, I am so great. Well, I caught this reflection photo on a photo hunt with Charley and JunQi but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. I thought it was cool but I looked too grumpy to profile pic it. I’m not sure what to do with my Nikon D90 because my Ricoh is surprisingly doing a good job at almost every photo I need to take beyond portraits, so now I’ve got this $1000+ asset on my hands that I’m not sure what to do with.

• There is a surprisingly stronger influence of environment on my mentality than I thought there would be. I always thought it was a “mind over matter” thing but the more design literature I read, I guess I am succumbing more to the idea that the design and flow and purpose of an object or a space is meant to work with your mind/body to accomplish a goal. Considerations: college dorm rooms that are so comfy that it is virtually impossible to study, libraries that are so sparse and stoic that it’s impossible to goof-off, Hill freshman hall rooms that are so small and hot that you have to filter out into the hallway to befriend people and possibly breathe, offices that are brightly lit and coffee-supplied to keep you productive, speakeasies that are dim and quiet to keep you in an alcoholic stupor. And of course, clubs where the mind numbing sound and lights offer such stimuli that it engages all senses at once. I’ve tried to study in comfortable and not nearly spacious enough dorm-rooms, or work from home when my room is currently 50% bed and 0% AC, and also tried to “chill” at the office (which has 100% AC but like 10% comfort) – there really is purpose to environments, whether it is intentional or unintentional, and it has a strong effect on how we live our lives. I have much more respect for the work interior designers and product designers (furniture designers), architects, and urban space designers do — how they arrange the world affects how we arrange our lives.

• I got some sort of stomach flu/food poisoning on Sunday. It coincided unfortunately with about the same time I wake up if I’ve had a bad night of drinking/am in for a bad morning of hangovers, but I had exactly ONE drink that night and it was ON A FULL STOMACH. I don’t know what I ate that made me so sick, but once it messes you up, it messes you up, man. I have some food PTSD now and I am not gonna drink alcohol for a while. Like, no hard liquor, no wine, maybe at most 1 beer. I don’t know what happened to college Jenny/2-years out Jenny to make me have such strong reactions to alcohol (again, though, maybe this bout was unrelated) but it’s still a decent opportunity to forgo it for now. Though TBH I think I spend more on coffee and tea on a regular basis than I do on alcoholic drinks now.

• So many people are in the city this month! It’s 2 years after graduation so it’s a very exciting time of transition. I don’t think I’ve had so many college folks gathered since graduation, and even some high school people (Harvey) are here! It comes at a good time because there are also a sad number of people leaving the city :(

• I love when people start projects. Some of Dean’s friends started a writing project, Avenue. Cortney and Ruani recently started Black Pantone. Kawin started taking dance classes again (I signed up too! hahaha), Lenny is trying out for the DanceWorks show, Harvey’s starting a company, Lucia started a chocolate making business, Dean is putting out music videos… I love when people make stuff! Sometimes when they are so tremendously successful at it (coughanythingbyAliceLee) and it’s amazingly beautiful (coughDyanaSo), you can’t help but get a little jealous but it’s incredible what they’re doing. So I realized that I have been “working” on this 20/20 project (tbh I kind of have been neglecting it in 2014) but didn’t publish what I was doing while I was doing it. I wonder why? Was I too self-conscious to spam people with posts, because some people post the stupidest stuff on Facebook and I should really not care. I think there is some level of desire in me to present a finalized product to the public, which is intrinsically counterproductive because “finalized” will never happen. Secondly, as I’m reading many design books, I’m starting to challenge the status quo. I am self-conscious/scared to post too frequently on Facebook – my personality is one of wanting to be accepted and not challenge the crowd around me. Some people post really dramatic, challenging things, with mixed results. I’ve never been good at handling “flames”, not when I was 13 years old and running much more public sites than I run now, and not now when I a working professional. For a long time I would think that it was some sort of personality flaw in me, and perhaps there is some greater pride I could take in my work, but I’m also starting to challenge the system itself. The environments around us – digital or analog – carry connotations and emotions from the way they’re designed. The design of Facebook, like the design of a dorm room (unintentional or not) has now exploded in size in terms of the audience I have, to the point where I am uncomfortable getting on a soap box and posting something, even though every one I am connected to is theoretically a “friend” I have met at some point in time. There’s something in the design of that system that sounds flawed, doesn’t it? And it’s reflecting in the numbers. Facebook membership is fluctuating, maybe do to the flock of mommys on the system, but I think it has to do with what it means to be a network vs. community. Wow, look at that, I tied the first wandering thought to this one! Maybe this could’ve been one cohesive post after all. On to the last point then.

• I saw Rohan like a post on Art of Manliness that brought it to my attention: Communities vs. Networks. Ever the pseudo-anthropologist, I’ve always been interested in social networks and communities, but like many have used the term fairly interchangeably. The restricting factor of Dunbar’s number on Communities part of what makes it appealing, but I was noticing this pattern being applied very strongly in the transition from college to post-graduate life. College offers VERY STRONG communities — you can have communities for almost anything, from extracurricular activities to academic pursuits to virtually no difference except for socially created constructs (like Greek life). There’s a lot of talk of recruiting for Greek orgs but honestly, the tribes form themselves. The people who would join just need to know about it and have the relevant information to decide if they find affinity to the tribe (rush, meet and greet, GBM, etc). But why can’t that pattern be applied after college? I find myself in somewhat of this situation – for the 2 years after college, however, I had a much stronger community than most people I would think coming out of college. With NYC being such a popular post-college destination, I had no shortage of people to meet up with and hang out with. But the frequency of those interactions being with small groups is definitely declining as people here and there begin to drift away and move on. My communities, tribes, bands of friends are starting to fragment and it’s turned more into one-off relationships here and there. That’s not a reflection of how strong those friendships are — some of my best friendships are 1-offs. But it does really make me miss the community-type of environment. Networks can help develop a person in a lot of ways, especially professionally, but it doesn’t nurture the “whole self” like this article describes. That view of my social environment in New York City set off lightbulbs when I read the article. While I was on UPAAN, there was so much back and forth (and frankly, a bit of loss) at how to facilitate a nurturing alumni community, when we were ourselves named a “network” and it would possibly be difficult to ever form a community unless everyone was in geographic proximity and in regular contact, like we were on college campuses. So is there a designed solution? Maybe, but I think it’s more naturally occurring than in need of forced improvement — people drift and find new groups, new communities. Maybe one work at group is particularly active. My ADO team at Accenture – that was a community. The random one-off people I work with now? Definitely in my network. The Bellaire 2008 IB senior class was a community – we suffered together. So was my German language program, since we spent so many hours not only in class but also prepping for state competitions. So in this globalized world where we are floating around exploring our options, the appeal of a community is possibly starting to resurface among this generation. For as much as international travel and exotic locations may be exciting, they won’t take care of you when you’re sick. Your biking bud you met while in Tanzania might’ve had an instant connection on that long ride but he won’t know to call up your family when your grandmother’s not doing well. There’s not very much romanticism in it, but there’s a lot of happiness that lies in the barn-raising and community ethic that grows organically. (By the way, Strauss-Howe thinks there’s a Fourth Turning impending, and as a result of these Crises, “cultural expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group”. Sound like the communities I’m talking about?)

Edit: The night after I posted this article, this Fast Company post caught my eye: “Apartment Tower Designed to Help Residents Make Friends”. I love the idea — it’s a perfect example of increasing attempts to incorporate community more into designs that probably just originated as a way to conserve urban space and get as many people into one vertical block as possible.