Wired 1996: Go With The Flow

Wired's John Geirland asks Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi ("CHICK-sent-me-high-ee") about web site design!

[from Wired 4.09: Go With The Flow]

Wired:

What do you mean by flow?

Csikszentmihalyi:

Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.

The piece is fairly odd: talking about static page-based websites or web apps in terms of flow is like playing the blues using only sticks and stones. But then, this is from 1996, a l-o-o-o-ng time ago.

But then, it gets interesting for a few paragraphs:

Wired:

In your book The Evolving Self, you wrote about promoting small social units, or cells, that would direct the course of evolution. Do you now see online communities filling that function?

Csikszentmihalyi:

Possibly. The cells I wrote about would be made up of people in the same locale who share some common interests and concerns, which are easy to translate into commitment. On the other hand, online communities are easy to create, but they are also easy to ignore and drop out of. There has to be a common business interest or ideology before an online community can have much leverage.

Wired:

Will the Net be a tool for advancing the evolutionary goal of a more complex consciousness?

Csikszentmihalyi:

The Net allows the easy exchange of information and the communication of values. But I'm still fighting the notion that the Net is really going to result in a more complex vision of reality. When things become too easy, they also end up becoming more sloppy. In the Middle Ages, for example, people were willing to walk from Stockholm to Munich to meet somebody who had something important to say. They listened and thought seriously about what they heard. Now, communication is instantaneous. I'm afraid after a while we may not pay much attention to it. The gates of attention allow very few things to come in.

We need better gates, then.

I wonder what he would say about Twitter?

tags: flow, john+geirland, wired, mihalyi+csikszentmihaly, twitter, social+presence

Comments

[henriette weber andersen]

Hi Stowe - excellent where did you dig that up ?

I am a big fan of Mihaly... and I think his notion on that the net is going to result in a more complex version of reality is.. well.. absolutely right..

[Stowe Boyd]

Henriette - Actually he says he is fighting that notion, although I agree with you.