Views of humanity

Aaron puts a really interesting perspective on the different ways that interfaces are changing our 21^st century society.  Humans are more connected than ever before, and many of his projects not only showed this, but also helped connect even more people through common interests and passions.  The airplane traffic maps were great proof as to just how connected we truly are.  With our own schedules often overbearing and hectic we forget about all of the other people in the world and their busy schedules.  There are constantly people traveling across states and around the world, even while we sleep.  The digital maps showing messages sent was another great way to show how connected we are too, especially the huge spike during new years.  That spike showed that when a worldwide celebration occurs it really does connect us more, and with the technology we have in this age were able to connect with anyone we want at anytime.  Aarons other projects were also interesting, but I also found them a little ironic since he believed they improved our humanity.  It was great how he got such a wide variety of people to participate in the drawing projects with the sheep and the Johnny cash music video.  But at the same time none of those people actually got to meet or truly interact in person.  An interface is when people meet and interact.  All of those people were each given an individual picture to draw, which was just added to a larger piece.  They may be a part of something, but the most interaction they get is to see the name and origin of the other people who drew something.  Not to mention this project was done completely over the Internet, so does it really improve our humanity to prove that we can contribute a small part to a large project?  If humans only interact over the Internet how does that instill their humanity?  I believe that meeting a person in the flesh contributes to their humanity.  Still thought I really like the ideas that Aaron had, I just don’t see how these “interfaces” reflect our humanity.  I think they were interesting projects that showed the different perspectives of various people.  Humanity is defined as the entire human race or the condition/quality of being human.  It’s such a broad definition that it could be visualized in many ways.  Aaron Koblin visualized humanity using communicative data and drawings made from people.  I visualize humanity more through how humans interact in person and the contributions made to the world as a whole.