I’m diverting slightly from our usual Sociology of… Everything monthly format today. This Substack began five months ago, and for the last four months, we’ve explored diverse themes that all converge in one place: technology. Dating, relationships, and the body were, in the not-too-ancient past, all understood in analog terms. Your body met people and had in-person relationships. That part was relatively simple. But now, as we’ve established over these few months, how we understand and connect with each other and ourselves is largely meditated.
So, today, I want to close out these interconnected themes by talking about one of my favorite documentaries, We Live In Public (watch the trailer here). I love this film because it points its lens at a fascinating moment not only in tech history, but human history, and reminds us just how recent this new way of being is. I am yet to find a better film to facilitate a conversation on how human interaction and identity have been swept up by technology (which is why I screened it in my Media and Identity classes at NYU).
We Live In Public focuses on Josh Harris, a man who was way ahead of his time. Many of you have likely never heard of of him, despite the fact that he was one of the our more significant early tech visionaries. In 1993, when dial-up was your primary path to the Internet (if you even had a connection), Josh became the first person to launch online television shows, which aired on Pseudo.com, a video webcasting site. Like many other early Internet moguls, his company went public and he made a fortune.
He threw crazy parties that would make Warhol proud and was a colorful character in the New York art and nightlife scenes. Then, in 1999, he staged one of the greatest social experiments ever for Y2K, called “Quiet: We Live in Public.” He created an underground Big Brother-style bunker, complete with a gun range and an 80-foot dining table, in which he housed 100 volunteers, all of whom were asked to reveal intimate details of their lives and face interrogation to gain acceptance. He installed surveillance cameras around the space, and each participant had their own channel on which to watch each other sleeping, showering, having sex — everything was captured and broadcast. It was a voluntary panopticon. Everything was free, but Josh reserved the right to use their image however he pleased. As crazy as that experiment might sound, it’s not so dissimilar from our (extremely popular) modern-day reality shows.
Josh also experimented on his own life, subjecting himself to the same public scrutiny. After the Quiet project was shut down by the police (you can imagine how that scene quickly devolved), he launched the now-defunct website, “weliveinpublic,” which broadcast the everyday, intimate life he led with his live-in girlfriend, Tanya. That several-year relationship did not withstand the 100-day, self-imposed live-streamed show in which they lived. It’s no surprise that constant public broadcasting can takes a toll on relationships.
Josh’s fortune also eventually went south. The film came out in 2009, and when Ondi Timoner, the filmmaker, caught up with Josh in 2014, she found him broke, living in an efficiency apartment in Las Vegas, working on his latest project: a real-world version of The Truman Show — what he claims to have been building up to all along. Is this sad? Inevitable? And might we fear we’re on the same path?
Josh Harris’s early experiments mimic what’s largely become a more exaggerated version of our everyday reality. Our hyper-public lives require vigilant image management to maintain and influence how we’re perceived. We’re burdened with the responsibility of controlling the flow of information to these multiple, mediated audiences — which is easier said than done, given the number of sites and platforms from which information is moving into and out of on our behalf. The curation and maintenance process is constant. (Un)tagging or Photoshopping photos; sharing or commenting on articles that share our POV; “liking” the content of others, with the hope that we will curry the same favor in return. As Baudrillard would see it, and as Josh Harris envisioned it, these digital actions not only simulate life, they are life.
The "looking-glass self" is a psychological concept that suggests we develop our sense of self based on the perceptions of those we interact with, and the degree of personal insecurity we display in social situations is determined by what we believe other people think of us. This looking-glass self formerly operated almost exclusively in person, but we now interact with thousands of people simultaneously online, making our profiles and avatars influential representations of our online identities. The temptation is hard to resist. Digital platforms present an exciting opportunity to star in your own virtual drama. With real-time praise from adoring fans, our online personas can be so validating. But beyond the self-esteem boost, these digital representations are increasingly the most frequent and lasting images we have of ourselves and others. We are eager participants in an everyday version of Josh Harris’s Quiet experiment: reality show contestants where the cameras are always on.
It’s not all bad, however. These virtual worlds and digital tools can theoretically feel liberating. They offer a new space of existence, give us time out of time from our physical lives, create an open environment for a radical reimagining of who we are, and connect us with distant strangers that can play a huge role in our lives. All the while, this nonstop simulation presents a confusing confluence of the personal and the public, the embodied and the digital, and the connected and the disconnected. The trade-offs are endless, and there are no simple solutions.
I wish I could say that after today we will fully turn our attention away from this month’s theme of the Sociology of… Technology — and, I promise, in many respects, we will. But, in reality, every Sociology of… topic has some connection to technology. So as we shift to the upcoming themes of Creativity, Travel, Friendship, and more, the mediated implications of these themes will linger in the background.
Remember: We may now live in public, but what we do there is still up to us.