Field Guide

Romance Redux: Part 1

by Nathan Heleine

If you were alive in May of 1905, you might have stumbled across an obscure romantic anecdote in the midst of your morning reading. A tiny New York Times article, all of sixty-three words, announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known love letter. Written by a Babylonian man named Gimil circa 2200 BC, part of the charm was his chosen format. The letter was carved into the face of a brick.

He writes to his lover Kasbuya:

“May the sun of Marduls grant thee eternal life. I would fain know if thy health is good.”

From that moment until now, the world has seen a 4,200 year evolution in communication technology. And if you were to unfold that timeline and lay it out across a large desk or dining room table, the relative age of online communication could be represented by the width of a single human hair.

Digital spaces for interpersonal communication are in their infancy. And when we examine the effects of our current platforms on the more intimate sides of our lives, we begin to see that these spaces have been architected to emphasize the network rather than the simple magic of relationships.

When two people interact, they’re not thinking about network effect. They’re thinking about each other. And across all of our shared experiences, be it a simple conversation or a dance, the vast majority of our interactions occur in pairs. What might happen if we go back to the seed and grow from there?

“If you want to make a living flower, you don’t build it physically, with tweezers, cell by cell. You grow it from the seed.” ~ Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

Today’s construct of the social web is in some ways tantamount to dropping a thousand ton block of concrete on the whole of our true human relationships.

Let’s bring the romance back.

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This is the first in a series of brief pieces exploring the notion of intimacy in digital products. We’re currently working to bake these ideas into our newest product, Duet. Visit duet.me to learn more and follow @duetme on Twitter for updates.