I’m a bit flat. The event, a phenomenologically challenging task for me, was successful. By that I mean, it happened. The failure state is that it was not recorded. Only memories of it exist, fractured across all the minds who participated. And given the state of the world and its business, like incense lost in a storm. I am left with nothing apart from my experience, which these days has very little social value.
The Event: Gift Party & My Mistake
Gathering as many people together as possible. The Gift Party: inviting others to gift their projects with a small sub-group, who then share forward with everyone in the gathering, and with the assistance of a recording, sharing beyond those gathered. An actual potential for virality. At the very least, an opportunity for participants to see their social effect, a glimpse in our social mirror in real-time, again both those live at the gathering and those who watch it live subsequently.
The first attempt to share with a group was early 2001. This was the second.
I emailed everyone in my lists: 700 members of Sqale, 1500 folks through ecosquared email, 1000 happyseaurchin. A fortnight week before the event I got kicked out of google who host my email service, which meant I lost access to most websites because google also carries my passwords. I remained calm and luckily with the help of my friend Wendy, was able to recover access a week later.
On the day of the event, my two co-hosts were otherwise engaged. I had to do the zoom admin, engagement with folks, walkthrough Sqale, and present my book. Needless to say it was… tricky. It was the very first few moments which threw me. I was going to hit ‘record’ on zoom and a pop up said something about recording — I hit yes and it declared ‘this meeting is being recorded’. I do remember seeing something about AI, but I just didn’t have time to consider how unusual this was because people were turning up. Since the button was red for recording throughout the meeting I thought it was ok. Only afterwards did I find out that I had OK’d someone else’s recording. I have tried to find out who, sent a request to participants whose emails I have, but no luck. It might have been an AI sent by someone who did not even participate. It’s gone. Only we are left, lone organics, with failing memories amid a world gone mad.