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Something Digital: The Importance of Offline Living in an Online World

Erin Payne

Nov 04 . 3 min

In October, we attended Something Digital with our sister agency, Agora. The annual conference is all about digital and how it is integrated into our lives, but this year had a distinct thread that many speakers touched on – the divide between real and digital.

The year of 2020 saw the world change in so many ways and the importance of digital was never more so than when people were stuck at home with only their cats, dogs, and other furry friends for company (the cats hated it, the dogs loved it). But this increasing focus on the home meant we had to adapt. While the digital world has lots to offer and it is changing the way we live and work, it also still has some challenges ahead. Throughout my time at Something Digital, this idea kept popping up.

In fact, the opening session saw the first speaker, Tea Uglow from Google Creative Lab, question this balance immediately.

“What is it that makes being in person different to talking to someone digitally?”

Tea was broadcasting live from Sydney and even this small divide had its limitations. She asked us what makes seeing her on a screen, real time, talking to us, different to her standing there at the conference in the “real world”. Was it a missing sense, or something more?

Tea brought it down to our physical relationship with computers, and how we experience digital. She mentioned that UX is focussed almost exclusively on people holding a small piece of plastic and glass, when it should be about how we bring the real world into that digital one, and vice versa.