Drop Spots and offline/online Social Connectivity
In 1997, I watched as a number of the personal websites that I read particpated in a group notebook project, each decorating one page of a blank notebook, scanning in and posting the page they had decorated, before mailing the moleskine off to the next participant. The premise was a simple one - a moleskine, mailed from one person to the next, and each recipient decorating and/or filling up one page, and then finding someone to whom it should be mailed next, someone that they only knew in the context of reading each other’s personal web pages.
Two themes quickly emerged: the notion of connecting one’s screen life with one’s offline life, vis a vis giving out a real name/mailing address, to the person who wanted to send you the journal, and the notion of exclusivity and how that affects online relationships. That second theme is a whole other post!
It was the beginning of deciding who to trust, oneline - who could have your real name, who could place you in ‘the big blue box’. These experiments continued, in various formats, including two of my favourites - Where’s George, and Dropspots. I just got a Where’s George bill the other day, and dutifully logged in to register it. This is the second bill I have recieved with a Where’s George stamp on it, and as it turns out, the person that registered it has registered more than thirty four thousand bills. That is some serious commitment to outsider social connection.
Dropspots is new, and a little more personal than wheresgeorge - a harkening back to the whole moleskine journal idea. In their FAQ, they say this: Leave things of little or no financial value. Leave things that you’d like people to add to, or modify in some way. It is amazing to me the lengths to which humans will go in order to connect with one another.