Foursquare and the like are weird to me because I was a nerdy nerdy nerdboy in jr. high, watching Hackers and Ghost in the Shell and reading cyberpunk and listening to the prodigy experience and thinking that 2010 was going to be all avatars and metaverses, and I would be one of the ones running the show because I knew some stuff about how computers worked. Technology would allow me to transcend the limits of my weak, pasty, awkward self and transcend, become something better, and live a kind of life never before imagined. Well, 2010 is here, and all this amazing tech that we have access to isn’t building virtual worlds populated by savvy idealists and A.I. ghosts and ninja hacker cowboys riding ICE-breakers across cyberspace. Nope. Technology just takes the inanity of our modern little lives and reflects it back at us a thousand fold. So-and-so is at such-and-such bar. Here are fifty pictures. “You like this.” So while I once imagined I’d be dissatisfied with my mundane life and would turn to tech for transcendence, the reality is that tech remains more mundane than I ever could have imagined and I turn to real life experiences, disconnected from the tech, for transcendence.
— Nick James on NYC Fixed Gear
