I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Ten years ago, I was working in advertising, launching the mobile internet for BT. It was so new that we called it the "mobile internet" instead of the mobile internet, protecting its context with speech-marks so the cynics wouldn't scoff. Boy, did we make some overclaims. We dreamed big, ate a couple of paradigm shifts for breakfast each morning, and inflated the dot-com bubble like a party balloon.

Ten years later, our promises are only just starting to come true, which is why I'm only just starting to be interested in technology again.

Newspapers have always given us the ability to patrol our extended territory from the breakfast table. The internet magnifies this benefit. And whilst magnifying it, it introduces a big drawback. For me, anyway.

You see, newspapers aren't personal. I mean, they are, especially in London, where we use them as an excuse to avoid eye contact. I'm not talking about the format, though - I'm talking about the content. Newspapers are definitely not personal.

The internet is personal because it enables us to patrol our personal tribal territory, not just patrol the public territory that the newspaper editors choose to show us.

And by making what was inaccessible accessible, by reconnecting us virtually with our scattered tribe, it makes us hungry for more. Hungry for more what, exactly? Hungry for more contact. Newspapers make us want more knowledge, and social media make us want more contact.

Yes, I know it's also a useful source for information, but let's be honest - nobody ever lay on their deathbed and said, "I wish I'd read more articles."

The history of communications technology is the story of trying to reduce distance, and replicate the physical presence of the other person. It started with smoke signals, then pictographs, then writing; when we had telephones, we could hear each other's voices; with videoconferencing we can see each other. It's all one big march towards reproducing the person physically, reducing the physical distance between the two people. Electronic telepathy.

I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter, although it's very early days yet. Why do I love it? Because through Twitter I've discovered fascinating new things and people, and I get a constant stream of inspiring stuff to dwell on. I like dwelling on inspiring stuff.

And why do I hate it? Because it makes me hungry for more contact with the people I like. Twitter is a big electronic grapevine, the tribal watering-hole for the whole world. Once you're on it, your social instincts compel you to stay, because you feel abandoned if you don't. And don't even get me started on Facebook.

Wait, it gets worse. Whilst I'm hungry to meet the people who interest me, I'm even hungrier to see the people who I know for real. When I see a real-life friend on Twitter or Facebook, it makes me tear my hair out - I want to climb inside the computer and hug them, and I can't. When I see an update posted by a friend and I can hear his or her voice through the 140 characters, then all I can do, in the words of old Shakey, is feed upon the shadow of perfection. Damn you, Twitter!

It's slightly perverse that I enjoy the tweets from people I don't know more than I enjoy the tweets from people I know, because I don't get frustrated by the fact that I can't spend time with strangers.

You know what I find really ironic? All this technology, all these clever people, all these ideas and software codes and business plans and... what are they all doing? They're all helping us to enjoy each other. They're helping us groom, helping us to do the things we've all done for millions of years, and which we can't do because the modern industrial world has increased the physical distance between us and the people we like to be with.

At the end of the day, all of this clever technology is just taking us back to our natural tribal state, as closely as it can. And I find that fascinating, and beautiful. We have amazing technologies available to us, which all come from thousands of years of trying to reject our tribal nature, and trying to be something bigger, something more. And what do we do with this technology? Inevitably, addictively, we repeat the social patterns of our ancestors.

We do this because technology is about people, not things. And people are about each other.

All we do on our screens is try to be with each other, with clumsy limitations. If you spend all day at a screen, go and see a real person tonight. And don't tweet about it.

So when is a startup going to come along and offer us holograms of each other? I don't want to see 140 characters in a micro-blog post. I want to see my friends in my living room, and open a bottle of wine with them. Even if they're in America, or Sweden, or Israel, or round the corner, staying in because they're hungover - they could sit in my house and I could sit in theirs. We could chat to each other's holograms in real time.

But then I'd really want to give them a hug, and that would drive me crazy.