{"id":16025,"date":"2021-12-05T11:42:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T06:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=16025"},"modified":"2021-11-04T11:46:41","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T06:16:41","slug":"ex-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2021\/12\/05\/ex-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-communities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the pleasant side-effects of the pandemic in Bangalore is the (relative) reduction in time to get to places. That meant I didn’t grumble much when we had to make a trip to Jalahalli. The original plan was to use the Metro but thanks to the reduced time, we took a cab. Typical tourist behaviour! (For Whitefield residents, Jalahalli is practically tourism)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our destination was somewhere inside the HMT kingdom and on our way back, as the sun began its descent, the backseat of a car was a great place to reflect on folks spending their Sunday evening. Using HMT and time together is predictably Facebook<\/s> meta, but there is a poignance in the vestiges of a once thriving community. A cinema, an officers club, an auditorium, a playground, a hospital and even a museum, all centred around a factory. Someone’s vision of a self-sufficient ecosystem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And like all ecosystems, it has a shelf-life. But parts of it persist, and the crowd in the playground, where two cricket matches were being played simultaneously, was proof of that. It reminded me of the university campus<\/a>, and a phrase I had used for it almost a decade ago – islands in time<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am probably biased because I am an 80s kid. Technically 70s, but hey, what’s a couple of years in a few decades? I think the ecosystems that I experienced in the 80s gave people a shared identity. And I could not help but juxtapose this with apartment life. Yes, we call it community, but how many really are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also believe we have been moving relentlessly towards a more individual-centric was of living. Technology and specifically mobile internet has accelerated it. Ironically, the pandemic was a speed breaker that made us realise our shared existence in isolation, but the lesson, I pessimistically believe, won’t stick. Algorithms ensure that our digital consumption is a warped version of reality tailor-made for the individual. And when everything from food to self actualisation is a swipe away, community gets played differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One shift is from real to digital. I am old enough to remember the first years of the consumer internet (in India, at least) and the online communities then. IRC, anyone? \ud83d\ude42 And the early days of Web 2.0 – from Google Reader to Del.icio.us to Twitter. Yes, these ecosystems too have a shelf life. The internet has matured, and by definition, that is a loss of innocence. And likes and ‘fams’ simultaneously reveal and exacerbate the malaise within. I happened to be reading Behave<\/em>, and found this paragraph relevant here – <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…neighbourhoods readily communicate culture to kids. Is there garbage everywhere? Are houses decrepit? What’s ubiquitous – bars, churches, libraries, or gun shops? Are there many parks, and are they safe to enter? Do billboards, ads and bumper stickers sell religious or material paradises, celebrate acts martyrdom, or kindness and inclusiveness?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look around, across real and virtual neighbourhoods, and think about what you see. Maybe it’s me, but it is indeed ironic that the era of hyper-connectivity creates an inherent sense of disconnectedness. Not just from others, but from the self too. That, is a dangerous place to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a few decades, the idea of community has changed. Not just from physical to digital, but also in terms of their character. What does it say about us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,6181,7],"tags":[77,6218,5807,6463,6462],"class_list":["post-16025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-social-commentary","category-yesterday","tag-communities","tag-cusat","tag-ecosystems","tag-hmt","tag-jalahalli"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16025"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16044,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16025\/revisions\/16044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}