These days I’m really exhausted and I badly need holidays. All of this because of the olympics. Hmm no, I’m not one of the athletes, I just worked on some olympics website… coding can really be tiring too you know ! But even though I’m crushed like an old cookie and I’m not inspired to write, I couldn’t let that one pass : hey Planet, today is my birthday.
For this special day my friends offered me an unlimited year pass to the museum. It made me laugh so hard that they had this idea because usually not everyone would be pleased with that kind of gift, they took a big risk, I mean “free pass to the museum”, rock on !! But honestly it’s so the perfect gift for me, they couldn’t have a better idea, I really love it. It’s weird to realize that my friends actually know me better than I expected, I must radiate some highly geeky vibes for them to offer me that, it’s like offering an encyclopaedia – if it’s digital I would really love that too. It’s reassuring that they know this not through some kind of api that they quickly checked online to know what I’m interested in, but rather because I dragged them to go to the museum with me in the past.
I think I want to take a moment to really enjoy that realization, that people know me because they interacted with me, through actions and not because they read some file about me. I think the future that is coming ahead is not going to be like that anymore, you won’t even need to interact with someone to know what they’re interested in, you will just need to check their file. And you won’t be very surprised when people get you a present because it’s going to be the present you put on your list.
On the one hand, I understand why we need this form of api, it kind of breaks the ice. No need to introduce yourself during 3 hours and go back to the day you were born to tell your story. It has some real benefits, at least you have the data if you want to please someone. But on the other hand something is not right, because it sounds too easy, and actually careless to use this data. I’m sure there’s a happy medium but I haven’t thought it through yet.
So for today I’ll just pin this moment of realizing and enjoying that my friends know me well because they just know me, period. Weirdly, it surprises me and it gives me a good feeling. I’ll probably come back from the future and read this and I won’t understand what I meant, but I can’t describe it further. Right now I find it important to show and document that in the past (now) this kind of relationship where people “know” each other existed and was actually valuable and rich. I think that in the future we will probably rather “learn” each other. So, note to my future self and also people from now : remember this.
Anyway, careful, my pass is not for any kind of museum, it’s for the modern art museum, hey what did you expect? I don’t go visit antiques and fossils, what kind of geek do you think I am !
