Research : The Experience Society

i have read the article below and trying to experience the hi technology society

The Experience Society
In advanced industrial nations we can talk, for the majority, about a post-consumption or no needs society, in which people look for something beyond the satisfaction of their functional needs. With primary needs satisfied, people look increasingly to satisfy other, more sensorial, emotional and even spiritual desires. The goal is to experience and explore rather than to consume.

Complementary to this search for sensorial gratification and experience is a growing awareness and emphasis on the non-rational, on emotions, feelings and intuition as a way to navigate the complexities of today. Rationality and logic alone are no longer sufficient to guide us on the right path. Heart and mind become tools for living. In this script we can think of how technology can enrich our daily living and how it can foster our need for play, discovery and creativity.

In this narrative, technology could be considered in terms of its "uselessness" as opposed to always thinking of technology in terms of its usefulness. What if technology had no other purpose than to lift our hearts and our spirit, as did the beautiful buildings of the past? "Nebula" is the perfect expression of such apparent "uselessness". Users of Nebula download images from the Internet and feed them into a player that, to take one example, projects images onto the ceiling of the bedroom to provide a "waking up experience" as far removed from the trilling of an alarm clock as it is possible to get. With Nebula, the sleepers wake to rolling clouds, or tree branches waving in the breeze, or whatever image suits them best. It isn't "necessary" in any conventionally defined manner, but it is deeply pleasurable and, as such, valuable. At the same time the intelligent sheets project images, downloaded onto tokens, around the room dependent on your movements and your activities!

By downloading images via a handheld you could personalise hotel rooms.
Nebula


At the same time, in our mobile society we spend more and more time in "non-places" - airports, supermarkets and subways. These are "non-places" as they do not build memory and culture and community, they do not build identity and are limited in experiences, or at least positive ones. Technology can help to compensate, as for example with the "Subway Garden". This project allows commuters to plant flowers with their mobile when taking the subway. By swiping your mobile for access and/or payment you plant a seed or a flower, so that collective virtual gardens project throughout the non-places, enriching the environment and allowing you to leave your footprint. A communal experience is grafted on to a "non-place" in a way which is "frivolous, but subversive". Subversive because it undermines technology as only being functional and society as only having a place for the efficient and the productive.

The Sustainable SocietyThere is a growing concern about the "state of the future" that we are building for generations to come as well as about the necessity to find a balance between consumer's wants and society and the planet's needs. People are beginning to question the very notion of "more is better" and to re-define the quality of life. This social trend focuses beyond materialism towards values and meaning: an awareness of holism, wellness, spirituality and authenticity. The question here is: How can technology help us to create a more sustainable future? Perhaps this is the fundamental question for the future.

In this narrative, technology can become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Digital technologies are helping us to "virtualise" certain products such as CDs, books, films, etc. and, as we have seen, it can help us to "dematerialise" by embedding functions into the daily environment. Instead of rooms filled with pieces of apparatus fulfilling just one function - CD players, video recorders, television sets - we will find ourselves in spacious rooms with less clutter because either these functions are embedded and accessible, through displays, or the few machines that remain will be capable of multiple functions. The television will be able to act as a television, a painting or a computer screen. Loudspeakers will provide light as well as sound. Mobile phones will access entertainment or information, facilitate payments, wake us up in the morning and become a closed circuit to our nearest and dearest.

This article was written exclusively for receiver.It is based on a lecture Josephine Green gave at the Mobile Futures Conference in May 2001 in Amsterdam.