virtualDavis

How do flâneurs indulge their habit when confined to their studies, jockeying their bureaus?

We read. We write. We shuffle and curate photographs. But sometimes — jonesing uncontrollably for a brief flânerie fix — we dive into the digital arcades. The popularity of my recent post on cyberflânerie has prompted me to share a secret pleasure.

Sometimes, while I’m supposed to be massaging meter or decluttering stories, I plug in the Robot Flâneur and savor the guilty pleasure of Parisian flânerie. Or Mexico City. Or Tokyo… Robot Flâneur is a visual “explorer” based upon the magic of Google Street View. Just pick one o the nine cities around the world and enjoy the voyeurism. But not for long! Remember, there’s all that work to do…

This digital indulgence, courtesy of London-bassed writer and technologist James Bridle (booktwo.org), is simple but intriguing. And not a little habit forming.

“Google Street View is both the view from the machine (from the car, the Ballardian view-of-our-times) and the view of the machine (the way the machine sees). Overlayed with data augmentation, from a non-human-natural perspective (the roof of the car), slightly lensed (fish-eyed), wholly networked.” ~ James Bridle

I can hear your voice vibrating through the internets: “Wonky!” And you’re right. Sort of. But Bridle may not be the best one to articulate the sizzle in his “web flâneur” steak. It’s siren call is really enticing, especially because it’s only an effortless mouse click away most of the time. But don’t take my word for it.

Utterly useless but strangely compelling site… The idea is simple. You find yourself in a random London location in Google’s Street View. Thirty seconds later you’re teleported to another random location. That’s it… [And yet] Robot Flâneur is oddly addictive. ~ Matt Brown (Londonist)

Take a scenic vacation sans pants… Each slideshow’s interactive shots have been hand-picked to most accurately represent the local urban culture, and’re navigable using keyboard shortcuts, which’ll inevitably end up getting you lost in an area where you’ll have to roll up your computer’s windows and lock the doors. (Thrillist)

Robot Flaneur… allows users the experience of a casual stroll around famed cities… Though simplistic, its voyeuristic capabilities prove addictive… For those of you with shorter attention spans, new images are refreshed every 30 seconds, with the option to zoom in, zoom out, or skip around. Just consider this the ultimate staycation. ~ Laura Feinstein (PSFK)

What are you waiting for? Give it a try! (But remember to drop a crumb trail…)

Related articles

• What is a Flâneur? (virtualdavis.com)
• Ascent of the Cyberflâneur (virtualdavis.com)
• Mindfulness and Flânerie (virtualdavis.com)
• The Loquacious Flâneur (virtualdavis.com)
• Metro Flâneur (virtualdavis.com)
• Google Street View Captures Stunning Images of American Poverty Too (motherboard.vice.com)
• Google’s Street View Goes Into The Wild (npr.org)

If I was a cartoonist I would depict a cyberflâneur with huge burning ears… because s/he had developed the ability to listen intently from a place of silence! ~ Linda Hollier

Linda Hollier‘s (@lindahollier) playful caricature delights for many reasons not the least of which is its totally unselfconscious (and, I suspect, unintentional) counterpoint to Evgeny Morozov‘s (@evgenymorozov) op-ed, “The Death of the Cyberflâneur“.

Morozov pits his cyberflâneur caricature — a late 19th century dandy shackled and handcuffed between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — at odds with social media.

Transcending its original playful identity… [the Internet is] no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore. The popularity of the “app paradigm,”… has made cyberflânerie less likely…

THE tempo of today’s Web is different as well… the “real-time Web,”… it’s Silicon Valley’s favorite buzzword.

That’s no surprise: people like speed and efficiency… ~ Evgeny Morozov (NYTimes.com)

Morozov proceeds to single out Google and Facebook as two of the most flanerie-threatening forces. He likens the latter to Baron Haussmann who’s urban planning transformed Paris during the reign of Napoleon III, eliminating many of the conditions which had proven favorable to flâneurs.

Google, in its quest to organize all of the world’s information, is making it unnecessary to visit individual Web sites in much the same way that the Sears catalog made it unnecessary to visit physical stores several generations earlier.

[…]

Facebook seems to believe that the quirky ingredients that make flânerie possible need to go. “We want everything to be social,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said on “Charlie Rose” a few months ago. (NYTimes.com)

Swept up in a relentless 24×7 social data stream which simultaneously guides and limits our capacity (or appetite) for aimless meandering, we are less and less likely to veer from the pack. Gone is the autonomy and the veil of anonymity which let us lurk voyeuristically, dabbling, observing, studying humanity’s mesmerizing diversity. Or so Morozov asks us to believe.

Hollier offers another perspective. She isn’t Pollyannaish about the web, social media and our increasingly wired lifestyles, nor does she shy from the challenges of information overload. Instead she embraces the data inundation much as late 19th century Parisian flâneurs embraced the urban throng. Together, but apart.

It is this intentional distance that Hollier and I have mused over individually and collectively over the last year or two. We recently reflected on deep listening to access the source of storytelling, even in the midst of distraction and hubbub. Hollier has explored the flâneur as a model for mindfulness, suggesting that “the flâneur thus begins to play the role of consciousness“, and she returns to the idea of mindfulness in “Cyberflanerie: Deep Listening in Cyberspace“, suggesting that the state of conscious, unbiased receptivity is precisely what distinguishes and empowers cyberflâneurs.

There is so much information coming at us in cyberspace that unless we nurture the intention of listening with “moment by moment, non-judgmental awareness” – the definition of mindfulness given by Jon Kabat-Zinn – we stand the risk of being overwhelmed and suffering from information overload. We will fail to capture the fleeting moment. It is only with an attitude of deep listening that we will be able to filter what really needs our attention. (here2here)

Deep listening. The cyberflâneur’s art, like his/her predigital forebears, is the art of receptivity. Attentive openness and observation without judgment. Heightened perception and omnivorous curiosity.

Today as we move through the speedy spheres of cyberspace – the limitless mindspace we find ourselves in when using technology to communicate – I believe it is the perceptive attitude of the flaneur that we should seek to cultivate… This practice will require a deep listening, whether it be to visual, aural or textual images. (here2here)

Hollier’s big-eared caricature of a mindful cyberflâneur strolling the global arcades we know as the Internet and practicing the art of listening resonates with John Hendel‘s (@johnhendel) “The Life of the Cyberflâneur“.

Space, whether for the Parisian walker, Internet browser, or tablet user, always has its architects, and what we now have amounts to a virtual, wonderful labyrinth without end… The cyberflâneur is triumphantly alive, a wry cackling presence that pops up wherever I look… Lurkers quietly drift at all hours, intent and voyeuristically hungry for understanding. There’s the sly playfulness and quirk… The cyberflâneur continues to probe our online paths today, and I suspect the same will be true tomorrow. (The Atlantic)

Hendel’s article, penned as a response to Morozov’s doomsday op-ed, concludes with an inevitable observation: Morozov must be strolling another Internet. After all, the digital arcades that Hendel, Hollier and I stroll enable and encourage a veritable renaissance for flanerie. Long live the cyberflâneur!

If you’ve endured this ponderous post, you may enjoy reading the following related reflections:

• Yrjö Ojasaar, CEO of Publification.com, responds to Morozov with a defense of “social reading”
• Swarthmore professor Peter Schmidt channels Mark Twain: perhaps rumors of the cyberflâneur’s death are exaggerated?
• Toby Manhire from the New Zealand Listener aggregates articles related to the rise of the sharing fetish.
• Jesse Darling strikes a smart, sarcastic note about arcades, mall rats, and after-dark thugs.
• The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research’s podcast, episode #3 tackles Morozov’s cyberflâneur death knell.
• Ainsley O’Connell debunks Morozov’s cyberflâneur eulogy.