Welcome to the GMT
Earlier this week I finished reading Cory Doctorow's excellent "Eastern Standard Tribe," a fairly straightforward romp that was driven by one very interesting central conceit.
In this book, many people have split off into different tribes based not only on their likes and dislikes, but also the time zones where those people are based. Doctorow's theory was, as the Internet connects people more and more based on what they like and dislike, they have fewer and fewer reasons to find like-minded people in the areas they live. They don't need to. Everyone who treats them like a peer is only a few keystrokes away. So, they join a tribe based on whatever time zone the bulk of their peers happens to live in. Someone living in Connecticut, for example, would likely be a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, although there could be members anywhere from California to Calcutta. However, regardless of where their friends might be, they still have to deal with the world around them simply because they can't avoid simple things like the rising and setting of the sun and how businesses and the rest of life are set up to correspond to what time it is locally. So they end up totally screwing with their sleep schedule, staying up very late or getting up very early, taking stimulants to keep awake and sneaking naps in during the day, all so they can keep in tune with the people who know them best.
I find this concept fascinating, mostly because I see it happening in the real world today. Doctorow, being not only a science fiction writer but also a futurist, was eerily accurate in this prediction. I'm a good example of this. My interests in both comic books and podcasting has led me in the last year to a group of like-minded people based out of the UK. And these aren't just people I occasionally post back and forth with on message boards. Heck, one of the coolest friends I've made in the last year I met doing this, and she lives in Pontypridd, Wales. We just met up in New York last month, remember? And I just got finished proofreading a novel for a guy who lives in central England, which he personally requested I do because I've talked with him about his writing and he knows what he likes are in sync with what I like.
Yeah, I admit I spend too much time on my computer, and I've been making a conscious effort to do less of that, even though I have slipped some recently. But I want to be quick to point out that my friends and I are all far too level-headed to go the extremes Doctorow discusses. I don't care how much I get along with someone. I like my sleep and sleep likes me. It keeps me happy and productive and intentionally messing with that has got to be a sign of some deeper-rooted mental illness. And my friends behave pretty much the same way I do. We make do with the nine or so hours our lives are in sync. But the Internet is proof enough that many people aren't nearly so rational. I mean come on, they made fun of this phenomenon in "Doonesbury" last year.
Doctorow predicted this trend in 2004. Five years ago. Where will we be in another five years? Will people realize what they're doing and cut back? Or will people like me wake up one day and find they've become members of the Greenwich Mean Tribe?
In this book, many people have split off into different tribes based not only on their likes and dislikes, but also the time zones where those people are based. Doctorow's theory was, as the Internet connects people more and more based on what they like and dislike, they have fewer and fewer reasons to find like-minded people in the areas they live. They don't need to. Everyone who treats them like a peer is only a few keystrokes away. So, they join a tribe based on whatever time zone the bulk of their peers happens to live in. Someone living in Connecticut, for example, would likely be a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, although there could be members anywhere from California to Calcutta. However, regardless of where their friends might be, they still have to deal with the world around them simply because they can't avoid simple things like the rising and setting of the sun and how businesses and the rest of life are set up to correspond to what time it is locally. So they end up totally screwing with their sleep schedule, staying up very late or getting up very early, taking stimulants to keep awake and sneaking naps in during the day, all so they can keep in tune with the people who know them best.
I find this concept fascinating, mostly because I see it happening in the real world today. Doctorow, being not only a science fiction writer but also a futurist, was eerily accurate in this prediction. I'm a good example of this. My interests in both comic books and podcasting has led me in the last year to a group of like-minded people based out of the UK. And these aren't just people I occasionally post back and forth with on message boards. Heck, one of the coolest friends I've made in the last year I met doing this, and she lives in Pontypridd, Wales. We just met up in New York last month, remember? And I just got finished proofreading a novel for a guy who lives in central England, which he personally requested I do because I've talked with him about his writing and he knows what he likes are in sync with what I like.
Yeah, I admit I spend too much time on my computer, and I've been making a conscious effort to do less of that, even though I have slipped some recently. But I want to be quick to point out that my friends and I are all far too level-headed to go the extremes Doctorow discusses. I don't care how much I get along with someone. I like my sleep and sleep likes me. It keeps me happy and productive and intentionally messing with that has got to be a sign of some deeper-rooted mental illness. And my friends behave pretty much the same way I do. We make do with the nine or so hours our lives are in sync. But the Internet is proof enough that many people aren't nearly so rational. I mean come on, they made fun of this phenomenon in "Doonesbury" last year.
Doctorow predicted this trend in 2004. Five years ago. Where will we be in another five years? Will people realize what they're doing and cut back? Or will people like me wake up one day and find they've become members of the Greenwich Mean Tribe?