I’m far, far too busy to be drinking coffee in a pub with internet types this morning.

The more expensive conventions are not any better in terms of either learning or making connections. The cheaper ones are not any better at being friendly or creative.

The Social Media Myth is that the ‘organic’, small-scale, newer and less well-known kinds of gatherings are somehow more worthwhile than the organised, larger, older and more conventional conventions. Many times, the gatherings are organised around web technologies such as wikis, the geek’s version of MySpace groups, and Twitter, the geek’s preferred instant messenger.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve turned up at these meetings and been met with a hundred geeks armed with enough technology to ward off alien invaders – laptops, mobile phones, video recorders, and sundry special devices of all shapes and sizes. The meetings are all supposed to be about social networking but everyone is so busy scanning for available WiFi or attempting bluetooth connections, they fail to contact one another on a human level.

Rather than closing the gaps, the technology in these situations is serving as a prophylactic. Perfectly sane people experience disjointed communication, interactions which are cut into pieces by video blogging, live video streaming and all the rest of the paraphernalia usually experienced solo at their desktop. Underneath this frenzy of technical play, often remains a loneliness which characterises many of their lives and to which, post-gathering, they return, having been prevented from achieving the intimacy they so badly need by the technology they have replaced it with.

This situation is maintained by a kind of social group denial, which does not recognise the negative impact of technology, and refuses to see the shadow side of the behaviour. Personally, I find it depressing. I value and enjoy spontaneity and it disturbs me to see tools which are claimed to enhance creativity and connection actually produce the opposite effect. I’d like to see some gatherings where the technology was checked in at the door; I’d like these social media early adopters to put aside their crutches regain their social muscles while they still can.

I kept a pretty low profile, which suited me this time, and was pleased just to hang out, catch up with old friends, and make new friends.

This is a 54 minute camera phone movie, shot on my (now elderly) Sony Ericsson k800i, best served with a squeeze of lemon.

Check out the photos here.

“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” quoted Boswell of Samuel Johnson. But he didn’t live in Islington, 2007, with the lifestyle becoming ever more precarious.

This weekend, a long muse on the mixed feelings I have about where I live, the London Borough of Islington, an idyllic urban bubble in the middle of the insane British capital.

There are also disputed claims that living near high capacity electric powerlines is dangerous. The Times ran a story (in 2000 I think) indicating that data does exist to show that to be close to large electrical installations up for long periods of time is not a healthy activity for human beings. It has been linked to higher incidences of cancer.

My concern is that we are as yet relatively ignorant about all this very new mobile technology we’ve adopted and yet we’ve started to use it everywhere; but we just don’t know the universe well enough yet to be totally certain it is safe. We may not even know what we should be measuring in the first place to check whether it’s safe. Let’s not forget that.

We haven’t seen such dark, water-bearing summer skies as this for a long time. It’s difficult to concentrate – we’re not used to this monsoon weather, at this latitude.

Or were they muesli bars? Was I witnessing an attack? Was the girl even human?

I thought I’d better ask her.

“You just need a uniform,” she said, “and a trolley like this one.”

When I got back home, I found that Unio and Petitio, my favourite fictional band had uploaded two new tracks, so I made myself a frothy cocoa, and made the lovely magic musicians a nice cheap pop video from my touristic camera observations, before bed.

There was an announcement over the public address system: the alarm in the large building nearby was to tested – do not be alarmed.

The alarm was tested. We were not alarmed.

Phew!

Tired after a hectic week, visited Hampstead Heath to refresh myself, and recorded this in the old marble bathhouse adjacent to Kenwood House.

These are church railings in the rain, but the effect at 10 frames a second in this 3GP video is the same. It’s a weird feeling, going in two directions at once, one we can all relate to, I’m sure.

You should be able to play this on any modern computer, especially if you have Quicktime installed.