I’m actually reading Milgram’s book “The individual in Social World” at the moment (it’s a collection of essays, the “Familiar Stranger” being one of them) – very interesting reading, makes you think about why you think about things (locations, specifically) in certain ways!

The Familiar Stranger is a social phenomenon first addressed by the psychologist Stanley Milgram in his 1972 essay on the subject. Familiar Strangers are individuals that we regularly observe but do not interact with. By definition a Familiar Stranger (1) must be observed, (2) repeatedly, and (3) without any interaction. The claim is that the relationship we have with these Familiar Strangers is indeed a real relationship in which both parties agree to mutually ignore each other, without any implications of hostility. A good example is a person that one sees on the subway every morning. If that person fails to appear, we notice.

Familiar Strangers form a border zone between people we know and the completely unknown strangers we encounter once and never see again. While we are bound to the people we know by a circle of social reciprocity, no such bond exists between us and complete strangers. Familiar Strangers buffer the middle ground between these two relationships. Because we encounter them regularly in familiar settings, they establish our connection to individual places.

Very cool design, I’ve been watching them grow that site. Funded by Nokia for independent thinking around mobile. Clever strategy.

ciao
simon

How awesome are TheFeature.com’s icons, though! Wow.

Really impressed with your photography, awesome stuff (hope it’s okay for me to link to your CT flickr photoset on about my about CT section.)
Ciao
Simon

PS I once had the experience of everytime I checked out my digital watch back in school when it read 7:47 (am & pm). Happened about 6 times that week. Freaked me out because my Dad was flying overseas around soon…

And typing that has left blotching raspberry jam marks on my keyboard. Damnit I hate typing over brekkers.

It’s a psychological function refered to as ‘monitoring’. Technically it’s the fact that you’re brain is sifting through loads of crap every second, but only makes you consciously aware of something when it stands out as being important or worthwhile. Kind of like when you veg out when driving and then all of a sudden realize you’ve gone 10 miles while in a daydream. It’s all monitoring. If something important happened during your daydream (like a red light or stop sign) your brain would have snapped you out of your current state to deal with it.

In the same way it says… ‘he look, there’s funny numbers on the clock this time around!’ and all of a sudden you’re aware of it. You just aren’t aware of the zillion other times you’ve looked at the clock and it’s been something like 16:57 – although you were probably subconsciously aware of the time.

That’s all for today class. Please remember to read Skinners’ theory of behavioural conditioning for next weeks lesson.