How to Age Up How to Know What's Real: How to Live in a Digital City
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May 20, 2024 Danah Boyd, a partner researcher at Microsoft Research and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, discusses how the challenges of urbanization in the past can shed light on navigating the digital world. She explores parallels between city living and online interactions, touching on anonymity, community formation, and societal impacts of online behaviors.
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City Anonymity
- Cities offer a sense of scale where anonymity is comfortable.
- Smiling at strangers on a busy street acknowledges humanity's vastness without needing deep connections.
Civil Inattention
- Cities thrive on "civil inattention," where people politely ignore each other.
- This acknowledges public space while respecting social boundaries, as studied by Erving Goffman.
Familiar Strangers
- Stanley Milgram explored the "familiar stranger" phenomenon in cities, where people recognize each other from routines but don't interact deeply.
- Context matters; running into someone familiar in a new environment can strengthen the connection.