Digital interactions

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We often live in the past; that's why, in a sense that I dislike, it's good for humanity to have a constant, generational turnover (read: dying).
Consider the way we conceptualise how things (including ourselves) are related. So often, we catch ourselves speaking in terms of action and reaction; A does this, so B does that; cause and effect; huge mechanical gears, that rustily and noisily move the machine of our lives.
We should know better. The ball does not hit the other ball, but there is a dynamic system in which two balls interact. Does the stone shatter the window, or is the glass of the window too fragile to withstand the impact of the stone? The cause precedes the effect, but there are feedbacks and balances. Things or, better, events, do not act on each other, they interact, dynamically, systemically, probabilistically, subtly. That we need to abstract some laws and regularities to make sense of this magma that's Being it's a necessity, not an option. Subtle but sharp difference.

Take a trivial example of interaction: you can walk at the pace of your diary.
  1. Synchronize your cell phone (mobile) and your Google Calendar: suppose you have an electronic diary in your mobile. Now you can synchronize it with Google Calendar Beta thanks to GCalSync.
  2. Synchonize your Google Calendar and your iPod: if you have an iPod with calendar functionality you can synchronize your schedules between it and Google Calendar, thanks to getCals.
  3. Be imaginative with you iPod: associate a particular song to a particular item in the iPod calendar, e.g. with the alarm clock functionality.
  4. Synchronize your iPod and your Nike running shoes: piece of cake, just make sure the size fits.

Mobile -> Google Calendar -> iPod -> Nike running shoes...
next time you see someone in a hurry, the simple explanation "she must be late" might be hiding a lot of interactions.

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