the photographer's movement

When talking about photography, we always reflect the photos as a result of the process. But we might forget one detail – the photographer. How does the existence of an observer affect the space, which requires invisibility?

Imagine you could take pictures with your eyes. One glimpse would be a snapshot. Your vision would contain an internal camera which you could use in moments filled with intimacy, unawareness or sensation. Think: what would be your motives? What would be the moments in which you would love to take a picture which allows the immortality of a second? Would it be the first kiss with your partner, the birth of your child or just random tiny second at the bus station in which the sun enters your day? These could be some moments, we want to remember, but our camera is at home, ready for the next vacation. Our daily life mostly is nothing we would declare special enough to take pictures of.

Yet, we have an internal camera to take pictures - our memory. When talking about important moments, we always have an image of the situation, which occurs when we think about it. But our 

memory is an instrument, which works with blurred filters and recreates the photos we might see from different perspectives, once we allow emotion to enter our consciousness.

Since smartphones became a part of our world, photography has transformed to a visual diary for everyone’s daily life. The food of our lunchbreak might appear on Instagram, while we snapchat our party dress to our best friend. Yes, smartphones create a possibility to save our daily life. But I additionally observed another tendency popping up: the fear of being photographed. In my childhood, when photography was correlated to thinking and getting a film developed, no one cared about cameras in the space. Today, once someone raises his smartphone, people fear being snapped and posted online. How does this affect our relation to photography? And how do photographers have to interact with this awareness?

photography is more than a 2D-medium. It is a multidimensional process, physically and emotionally.It is the result of an interaction, which aims to be unseen.

Photography itself is a movement. It requires empathy for the space. Once you move faster than the space you want to observe, the space will dedicate its attention to you. Once you slow down in a fast environment, the reaction will be a change in the system caused by yourself. This shows us, that a photographer, not being able to act invisible, always influences the space he wants to catch in his very natural sense. The first step of taking pictures therefore requires the attitude to adapt the given space, to coordinate your breathing to the present moment and become a part of it. The process of identification and integration shapes the possibility of an understanding and opens the door to picture something targeting reality.

Picturing environments made me realize that photography is a process which teaches us abilities such as listening, compassion and silence. But this also works the other way around: once you enter the space as a photographer, you will realize how your attention shifts towards the quotidian. People at tram station enter your perception while you follow the movement of a worker at the bakery. This experience invites us to focus on tiny aspects and enjoy the complexity our environment provides. A camera can be an add on towards mindfulness for the space.

from left-wing dance places to suited up universes – an intro into ‘environmentalism’

I am stepping out of the hotel. I am leaving behind sparkling dresses and champagne-attitudes, while entering a quotidian train station. I’ve always been fascinated by train stations, as they allow perspectives and correlations between environments. Managers meet musicians; mothers interact with those who have never thought on boundaries. The possibilities to observe multiple dimensions of our society shape my personal charm for these shared, public places. I started to investigate further my interest on diverse places and searched for a word to describe this passion of observing and entering universes, which actually do not belong to me. The word is called: environmentalism.

Once someone asked me which animal I would relate the most to me. I had to think about this question more than one year until I’ve found the answer, which felt appropriate. Here it is: I am a chameleon. Or if we do not use biological wording – I would consider myself to be an ‘environmentalist’. Environmentalist is someone who sparks into multiple universes, transits between cultures and thoughts, keeping an eye open for the daily and the unexpected and mostly: someone who never feels completely related to one specific context.

defining environmentalism  

People relate themselves to certain groups. These groups could result from cultural aspects, such as belief or nationality, further from interest and aspiration. But what happens once you can’t decide? Once you realize that all the boxes you could dedicate yourself to, do not correspond at all? Neither fear nor disillusion is the motivation for this decision, it’s more the fact that many of these boxes somehow seem to match, but none of them does it totally. In my life it looks like this: I am attending space conferences as a psychologist and psychological meet-ups as a space-enthusiast. I am doing KungFu as a dancer and I dance feeling my martial arts body. Some might call this the impossibility to decide, I call this the curiosity of discovering and combining.

working environmentalism

When I was a child I remember to have a certain dream, which occurred many times during my life. In this dream, I would be sitting on an aircraft, flying, passing by villages and cities, observing social worlds from above. My aim would always be to fly over these diverse environments, having the ability to stop time and just point at a certain spot, drop down and discover. Invisibly I would enter other people’s house and listen to their conversations, watch them eating and thinking. The purpose is curiosity, not the desire of changing or redefining the present environment.

Psychology, especially psychotherapy allows me to dig into multiple environments. My job offers me the possibility to listen to life in detail. I talk to police officers and prostitutes, to the pope or to a poet, depressed men, sad children or women on their way back to courage. I can spend hours of listening, observing processes individuals might take in their lives and all these stories extremely inspire me. I never felt bored by listening.

Listening requires the ability to adapt to multiple ways of communicating, sharing or thinking. I’ve learned how to deal with it: with left-wing activists, politicians, policemen and scientists. Adaption became my passport into a world full of concepts, which I wanted to discover.

and where is home?

My entire life was shaped by transit, but not by arrival. And once I developed this personal concept of environmentalism with the purpose of sharing it to others, many people asked me the same kind of question: “Where is the place or the concept you belong to?” I’ve asked myself this question several times until I found a place I would consider myself to feel some kind of deep belonging to. This place can be anywhere, but is has to be original, such as mountains or the seaside. Once I can hear the sounds of this specific environment, such as waves or trees, I feel some sort of pureness and connectivity.

Nature allows me to deeply reconnect and feel security and attachment. I relate myself to wind and water, the materials our body are shaped of (yeah, sounds esoteric, I know). Being in nature allows me simplicity and complexity at the same time. I feel pure, calm and related. Nature and its shapes allow me to feel my body, my breathing and my thoughts. I never felt alone, when hiking alone as I would always relate myself to the present moment in there.  Especially alpine environments provide a feeling of solidarity, compassion and equality. Solidarity, as nature is shaped for cooperation. Compassion, as nature allows protection and emotional care and equality as nature is never asking where you come from; especially if you are a chameleon.

                                                                                              

Kekse, Korrelationen und ein Hashtag namens "Mitgefühl"

Ich bin die mit dem Hashtag für Mitgefühl. Alex Hofmann, angehende Psychologin aus Köln. Mein Alltag beim ÖWF ist eine Korrelation aus Fenstermalfarben, Schokoladenkeksen und sehr langen Zahlenreihen. Vor allem die Zahlenreihen dominieren meinen Tagesablauf. Ich lasse sie miteinander in Balkendiagramme einfließen oder bastele aus Prozentangaben Persönlichkeitsprofile. Manchmal erleben meine Kollegen, wie ich vor meinem Laptop sitze und mich über einzelne Werte in einer monströsen Tabelle laut freue – und verstehen dann nicht so ganz warum eine Zahl wie 8,92 bedeutet, dass Astronauten Mitgefühl in der Kommunikation wertschätzen. Denn eigentlich geht es genau darum – komplexe Emotionen in einfach strukturierten Zahlenwerten auszudrücken – das kann so einige Erklärungsversuche erleichtern. Aber wie genau geht das? Und vor allem – warum?

Psychologie im Weltraum ist ziemlich wichtig: Astronauten leiden in Langzeitmissionen unter Isolation, sensorischer Deprivation oder unter kulturellen Differenzen in ihrer Gruppe. Außerdem ist es wichtig zu schauen, welcher Charaktertyp überhaupt für eine Reise zum Mars taugt und wie man eine Gruppe – egal ob Astronauten oder Mission Control – dafür trainiert. Das herauszufinden, das ist mein Job!

Eine meiner Aufgaben besteht darin ein Teamtraining zu entwickeln, das vor allem Kommunikationsfertigkeiten, aber auch Empathie für die anderen Menschen im Team schult. Gerade in der Kommunikation zwischen Mars und Erde findet man diesbezüglich einige Herausforderungen: Nachrichten von Planet zu Planet werden meistens über Chat übertragen – und bis eine Botschaft ankommt dauert es rund 10 Minuten. Dabei können viele Missverständnisse entstehen, wenn die Kommunikation nicht sachlich genug, aber auch nicht freundlich genug formuliert wird. Mitgefühl ist dabei eine Eigenschaft, die mir besonders wichtig ist. Wenn Menschen lernen mitfühlend in ihrer Arbeitsgruppe zu interagieren, sinkt das die Wahrscheinlichkeit für Konflikte und erhöht die Achtsamkeit in den Teams – das zeigt die Forschung. Gerade für uns beim ÖWF ist es wichtig, dass wir auch in stressigen Missionsphasen gut miteinander umgehen.

Darüber hinaus entwickele ich eine Studie, die genau diese Hypothesen, speziell in unseren Teams, überprüft. Welche Faktoren verbinden Menschen in einer Gruppe, und was trägt dazu bei, dass eine Gruppe nicht miteinander harmoniert? Was können wir aus unseren vergangenen Missionen lernen? Meistens arbeite ich mit Fragebögen, die am Ende zu den langen Zahlreihen führen. Psychologie besteht nämlich zu einem sehr großen Teil aus Statistik! Auf den ersten Blick wirkt das so, als würden wir die Komplexität des Menschen in ein vorpilotiertes Raster einspeisen wollen, aber so ist das nicht! Die Arbeit mit Fragebögen erlaubt uns, von einer großen Anzahl von Menschen, Gedanken und Tendenzen zu erfassen und genau diesen im Training und in der persönlichen Begegnung nachzuspüren.

Was mich an der Arbeit beim ÖWF so fasziniert ist, dass ich (nicht nur in der statistischen Auswertung) ein Team erleben darf, das übermäßig stark zusammenhält und kooperiert. Für mich als Wissenschaftlerin stellt sich die Frage, was genau dazu führt. Für mich als Mensch führt es dazu, dass ich mich in diesem Kollektiv sehr aufgehoben und richtig am Platz fühle. Ich möchte die Erkenntnisse, die mir meine Forschung schenkt aber nicht nur für die Arbeit in Analogmissionen nutzen, sondern möglichst viele Menschen daran teilhaben lassen, für die es eine Bereicherung darstellt lernen zu dürfen mitfühlender und kooperierender miteinander umzugehen. Mitgefühl ist wichtig – egal ob auf dem Mars oder auf der Erde. In unseren Missionschats gibt es deshalb jetzt den #compassion.

dieser Artikel erschien auf: http://oewf.org/2016/09/kekse-korrelationen-und-ein-hashtag-namens-mitgefuehl/

compassion! it's about humanity!

how the world leading psychologist in compassion and mindfulness research would teach me about being human. a personal summary of the congress “attachement and trauma”

I love listening. And I am more than intrigued by the concepts behind compassion and mindfulness as interventional methods in psychotherapy. Therefore I ended up, lowering the age limit and seeking for responses in the middle of 1200 people, attending a conference exactly asking this question: how does attachment work and how can we use mindfulness and compassion in therapeutically contexts with humans who have been affected by life so hard, that feeling love and joy is one of the most challenging tasks they’d find for their lives.

Many people are asking me now, what I've learned. Conferences are confined spaces, collecting masses of potential but hiding it behind scientific borders. As we were talking about humans, we should also share these thoughts to humans. I’d love that each of the 1200 attendees would spread his/her ideas and thoughts somewhere. It might happen in many ways - and here is mine.

  
It's not possible to sum up this massive inspiration and motivation, the complexity of thoughts and dedication to research I would be able to observe, but here are some of my most recent thoughts and feelings. I want to adjust, very seldom in my life I felt so much connected and supported in my way of thinking like in these days.

me, myself and a mainstream called mindfulness

We live in a culture which prays the individualistic, yet, the egoistic. People associate 'mindfulness' to a status of acting superior. But, mindfulness has nothing to do with yoga retreats in India and hipster vegan food. It has nothing to do with fleeing from this world and hiding in rooms covered by the smell of incense sticks.

“It’s mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness everywhere. And then: compassion, compassion, compassion. People are talking so much about it, that they can’t live it” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Mindfulness is mainstream. It became popular due to neuroscience studies, which showed how the brain transforms once people start to meditate. And who – in our society of high-achievers – is not looking for a perfect method to rewire the brain towards a supercomputer. But mindfulness is more than that and life itself should become the actual meditation practice.

“Mindfulness is not an invitation to become more and more egocentric, it is actually the other way around: do not act self-centered, but feel the correlational towards this planet and all its beings.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Daniel Siegel used an even better word for it: MWe, a combination of “me” and “we” to describe us individuals as a part of a large system we call: humanity. Yes, we might be separated by our skins, but we are interconnected by our breathing and sharing the same rhythm of heartbeat. Research is supporting his model of defining happiness as a result of feeling related to a group of people, and being a part of them.

we are all together in this

‘If everyone cares for himself then nobody is alone.’ I’ve heard this sentence in a group of dancers – means: a group in which people are associated with sharing moments of touch to each other. When this person said this sentence, everyone around would applause and appreciate the saying. I sat in the middle of this group and were about to cry. I don’t want to be the only one to care about myself – I want to be cared and protected by others. In addition to that: so many times we experience, that it is much easier to care about others than for you. Why not use this potential?

Yes, responsibility is risky. We can feel absolute responsible and meaning the best and we might achieve the worst we can imagine. Yes, responsibility is connected to failure, guilt, shame and all that ugly stuff modern society tries to prevent us from. But think about it: how poor would your life be, if you could never say or feel sorry? Shame is, according to Kathy Steele, a support for social structures in society which teaches us the borders and limitations we have to keep up in order to guarantee safety. Those who do not feel shame are sociopaths. Yes, responsibility sometimes forces us to cross the borders of what we consider to be accurate.

During her speech, Pat Ogden would show a therapy video in which she is holding the hand of a client who is traumatized from war and uses his right hand, seeking for touch. She asks him what he would like to do with the hand and he is responding that he would need her to hold it. So she did. Watching this, someone in the audience stands up and asks: "How could you touch the client? We are not supposed to do that in therapy." Ogden: "How could I not? Sometimes therapy comes to the point where it starts to be about humanity."

the most basic human instinct called compassion

No one ever has to learn compassion. We are all born with the intuition to care and feel for and with other humans. Using it in therapy is just a friendly reminder for our patients how care and listening can work, as these people are often so traumatized from the fact of not having experienced enough of it. Compassion is correlated to another aspect: courage! In order to be compassionate, we must dedicate ourselves to the fact that “our species is able to create good things and embrace love and care, but also works in a destructive way, starting wars, torturing people, coming crimes.” (Paul Gilbert) The acceptance of this suffering requires a high amount of courage and dedication. It expects us to decrease illusion, leave the hippie status of believing everything is covered in flowers. Yes, this world is good, and sometimes it is really bad. Both are part of our existence and need to be seen.

We are all wired to connect, shaped for love and build to take over the responsibility about ourselves, but also about everyone and everything surrounding us. Care and protection are infinity human instincts and the key towards happiness and love.

This is what I really have to share in these lines: Dedicate yourself, love, fail and fall, love even harder.

Mindfulness is everywhere, such as compassion. If there is something I really want to achieve now, it’s encouraging people to act responsible, feel interconnected and throw themselves into this adventure of falling and flying we call ‘life’. 

“People are aiming so much towards a higher and greater status of so called mindfulness. But this concept teaches us to live the present moment. Now. You could die after each breath. Focus on what is now and enjoy it.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

lost in transit

transit! is it geographical? physical? I started thinking - and ended up transitting - from emotions to virtual worlds.

first of all – this text has no real language as everyone was encouraged to use the language he/she prefers. That might be the first step towards an understanding of transitory spaces. We leave defined concepts of using only one language per article and start building our pathways to explore the more unprecise idea of spaces in between.

Thinking of transit helped me to understand that ‘transit’ might describe one of my life’s most important experiences. I’ve been born in transit. My parents emigrated from Romania to East-Germany, and short after my birth Germany would celebrate the reunification. I was raised between two languages and the values of two differing cultures. Also this blog could be seen as a transit space, trying to build up bridges between topics, which usually do not touch each other. Dance meets human spaceflight, plus education and mindfulness. It might be the fact that transit is overall in my life that encouraged me to explore further. The following stories share some perspectives on transit – physical, geographical, but also emotional and virtual transit.

Pia, 22 – „die Welt ist für mich kleiner geworden“

“Also, Düsseldorf, Cottbus, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona – das war so in den letzten zwei Wochen.” Pia muss ein bisschen überlegen, wenn sie ihre Stationen aufzählt. Gerade ist sie hier, nicht lange, ein paar Sachen regeln. Dann geht es weiter für sie. Es ist kein Urlaub, sondern ihre engagierte Arbeit, die unzählige Treffen mit Projektgruppen voraussetzt, die Pia  zu einem Menschen werden lässt, der viel Zeit an sogenannten ‚Nichtorten‘ verbringt. Orte, die oft keine Identität haben, so wie Bahnhöfe oder Autobahnen und die man eigentlich am liebsten so nutzt, dass man sie schnellstmöglich wieder verlassen kann. „Es gibt kleine Gewohnheiten, die ich an solchen Orten habe. Im Bus gibt es einen Lieblingssitz, wo ich gerne sitze. Wenn der frei ist, dann freue ich mich. Und es sind Details, die ich mit Orten verbinde – am Essener Bahnhof weiß ich, wie die Lichter einfallen, daran erinnere ich mich dann.“ 

Zum Abitur hat Pia ein Fahrtkostenkonto geschenkt bekommen. Und sie ist jemand, der seinen Rucksack nach einer selbst entwickelten „Standardpackordnung“ packt – und zwar in der letzten Minute. Jemand, der weiß, dass die Busstrecke nach Berlin von Sonntag auf Montag echt nervig ist. Und jemand, der das Wort „Transit“ nach eigenen Angaben nur sehr selten im Wortschatz benutzt. „Ich fahre viel Bus oder Bahn und dann arbeite ich oft dort an meinem Laptop. Oder ich schlafe. Ich empfinde die Zeit unterwegs selten als Transit, ich bin daran gewöhnt.“  

Die Anonymität von Nichtorten berührt Pia wenig: „Es hängt davon ab, wie empfindlich ich selbst gerade bin. Dann reagiere ich ganz anders auf die Menschen, die in der Bahn dicht neben mir sitzen.“ Aber ja, Nichtorte sind häufig Räume, in denen Gespräche verschwinden, obwohl die kontroversesten Lebensgeschichten nebeneinander am Fahrtkartenautomaten auftauchen. Obdachlose, die den öffentlichen Raum als privaten Raum nutzen und intime Handlungen, wie das Zähneputzen in den Schauraum der Öffentlichkeit transportieren. Und dann ist da die Frage, ob wir nicht langsam alle so werden – mehr und mehr im Transit lebend, verkabelt und verbunden, in Jogginghosen in Fernbussen und via Skype am Flughafen. 

„Wenn ich das mit meinen Großeltern vergleiche, habe ich eine ganz andere Wahrnehmung von Distanz. Die planen monatelang einen Urlaub. Ich denke mir: Oh, morgen musst du in Hamburg sein.“ 

Andrea, 30 – “plane tickets are my bookmarks”

I’m meeting Andrea at a bar. She is in transit. Friday – Sunday: New York City. Next week: Australia. “It’s just a 7 hours flight, and it’s direct, so no problem!” she says. Further, she still needs to pack her stuff. Tonight.  “I travel every weekend to a different country in Europe. 2-8 hours transit per day, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, depending where I go. Previously in Australia I travelled 900km one way to work in the desert, so I am used to these distances.”  For Andrea, transit means the time and location between work or home and her destination. A place she associates with words such as “recharging”. 

Time in transit is however long it takes to go from starting point to final destination. It's usually filled with private relaxation with music in headphones and games/movies work or on planes, after takeoff, by sleep. “I normally expect internet access in all forms of transit now for almost the whole time (in air wifi, train wifi, bus wifi, personal data roaming).” For many of us, transit is associated with anonymity and constant solitude, but due  to technological innovations, we are not alone, even during transit: “Anonymity doesn't play a role in transit anymore unless you drive or cycle or walk - all tickets are pretty linked to an official ID and your movement is trackeable.”

“Home is where I store my things and don't have to worry about what I'm wearing and what others think or being attacked or surprised.” 

Public spaces are anywhere outside a private home or hotel. “Private spaces would be somewhere you can relax and not wear pants. Public spaces can't be private except for shared spaces, like hotel rooms which are used by different people - in all other cases there's always a chance of someone approaching you and therefore outside of locked private residences where you could sleep without fear of being touched, I'd consider all spaces public.”
At the end of the year, Andrea usually draws a map of all her destinations. I am certain; most of us would fail doing this for the city they live in. 

Pedro, 33 

“values and ideals changing and me trying to keep up. New values showing up and turning life upside-down.”

“do you like it?”

“The short answer is: yes I do.”

Transit – we usually associate it with geographical places, points on a map. But transit also can happen between your synapses and your thoughts. We all might have experienced periods of time in our lives in which we realized that routines, thoughts and values are about to change. Some of us might be afraid of change – as we don’t know where transit is guiding us. Maybe, we just need to listen up and follow…

“Humm, looking back now, I think it started with the problems in the relationship. Even though I didn't "see" it at the time, I was slowly getting depressed and didn't know what was going on. Then I became officially depressed and learned - still learning - from it. I would say: I like it, but sometimes it was and is hard as hell.

With all this, many things changed and I eventually left my job and more recently the relationship. I don't say that there is a direct relationship... but it is the sequence of events. Earlier it would have been "just life", but at 33 years old I thought I had life figured out already. So now all this is "new" and "not me" and "people don't just do this" and it's hard to accept sometimes. That's why it feels like transit: stuff happening, moving all the time.

Recently I learned what it is to be sad. You may laugh at this, but I don't remember ever being (just) sad. Well, I laugh at it myself. It is painful, but it is nice to "know it" and "learn it" and "feel it".

Conny, 29 – “when I speak another language, my voice and my personality change.”

The term “emotional transit” can mean different things to different people. For me, it describes the sense of no longer feeling at home, or even at ease, where I live. On the surface of things, I should be fine. I live in my hometown, among people I have known my entire life. And I think that is exactly my problem.

For six years I used to live in England, and I have always considered myself a native English-speaker. Moving back to Germany a few years ago was a necessity at the time, and a mistake in retrospect. Ever since I came home, I’ve been living with the feeling that I do not belong here anymore. What I initially put down to reverse culture shock and reluctance to leave the UK, did not go away in the three years I have been back now. I spent most of my adult life so far in English-speaking countries, most of which had slightly different social patterns, cultures, and mentalities. Even as a native German-speaker, who had Advanced German in her Abitur, I still find it hard to speak German again. I feel that English is my true language. When I’m forced to read or translate something in German it always sounds wrong to my ear because I think the English version expressed it better.

English has become my default language. They say that you’ve truly mastered a language when you dream in it. However, I think you’ve really switched languages when it’s the first language that comes to mind, even first thing in the morning. If you can have a full conversation without properly waking up then, yes, I do believe that whatever language you’re using is the primary one on your mind. And that’s fine when the language you speak and the language you’re surrounded by match. But for me, the fact that I think and work in a different language to those around me can create everything from amusement to hostility. 

The longer I’m in Germany the stronger I feel that I do not belong here. And try as I might to re-integrate myself, I still end up feeling like a stranger in my own country. Home is not “Sweet Home” when you don’t belong. It has given me time to think, though, about the sort of culture and mentality I’d like to be surrounded by in an ideal world. While I was living abroad, I accepted the emotional transit from my own culture and language to another as a fact of life without conscious thought. Now I realise how momentous, deep-reaching and profound it really is. What I have come to realise and believe is that just like some people are born with the wrong gender or body, others are born in the wrong country and language. And that feeling, for me at least, has never been as strong as it is now that English is not my everyday language anymore. 

Mike, 29 – „Es hat nie eine Zeit gegeben, in der alle Menschen in derselben Realität gelebt haben.“

Gibt es einen Transitraum zwischen der Wirklichkeit und der Fiktion? Und wenn ja, wie erreichen wir diesen Zwischenraum und wie fühlt er sich an? Eine Möglichkeit das zu erfassen bieten uns Technologien wie Virtuelle Realität oder auch Konzepte der erweiterten Realität. Mike taucht dort ganz gerne ab!

„Schon immer haben sich Wahrnehmung und Interpretation der Welt auf Grund von verschiedenen Vorstellungen, Glaubenssystem und Wissensständen unterschieden. Dennoch befinden wir uns gerade an einem Umbruchsmoment. Zukünftig wird sich unsere Wahrnehmung nicht nur durch verinnerlichte Ordnungsmuster oder äußerlich angelegte Filterbubbles unterscheiden, sondern auch durch unterschiedliche technisch bedingte Wahrnehmungsmöglichkeiten. 

Bereits jetzt können wir beobachten, dass die unterschiedliche Verwendung von Computern, Smartphones und allgemein elektronischer Kommunikations- und Informationstechnologie das Handeln von Menschen massiv beeinflusst. Während immer weniger Menschen Karten auf Papier verwenden um sich an „realen“ Orten zu orientieren, durften wir vor kurzem das erste Mal beobachten, wie ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung sich die Welt nicht nur digital erschloss, sondern sie sogar ergänzte. PokémonGo machte das bereits seit Jahren existierende Konzept der Augmented Reality quasi über Nacht populär und massentauglich. 

Das Überlagern der physikalisch wahrnehmbaren Welt durch digitale Layer ist dabei für weitaus mehr gut, als nur für die Monsterjagd. Längst haben sich die unterschiedlichsten Wirtschaftszweige des Konzepts zum Beispiel zur Instruktion von Handwerker*innen oder zur Darstellung von Prototypen angenommen. Der Mehrwert entsteht hier vor allem dadurch, dass die ergänzenden Inhalte nicht nur auf dem Smartphone dargestellt werden, sondern mittels Brillen - und zukünftig auch Kontaktlinsen - direkt im Sichtfeld eingeblendet werden. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass die Anzahl, Art und Präsenz der Informationen, die wir uns so ständig in unsere Wahrnehmung einbauen rapide zunehmen wird. Warum sich nicht ständig eine kleine Karte oben rechts in seinem Sichtfeld einblenden oder die Entfernung von Freunden und Familie? Gerade weil dies auch zu einer Überforderung führen wird, wird sich das Ausmaß der Adaption und Anwendung solcher Ergänzungen von Mensch zu Mensch stark unterscheiden. Wenn die einen aber immer auf Ort, Zeit, Raumtemperatur, Börsenkurse und den inständigen Zugriff auf SocialMedia-Profile ihres Gegenübers zugreifen können, dann wird sich deren Weltsicht massiv von denjenigen unterscheiden, die nicht über diese Möglichkeiten verfügen. 

Wir werden zukünftig also noch stärker als bisher das Auseinanderfallen der Wahrnehmung von Welt, Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit beobachten können. Der „digital divide“ wird sich noch stärker bis in unsere Schlafzimmer ziehen.“

Transit means change, including a high level of insecurity and a demand on flexibility and adaptive skills. Once we zoom out of our perceptive – we will be surrounded by transitory moments. We constantly transit – in our relationships or our thoughts; some people do more, others less. The most important might be, to conquer transit with curiosity and compassion.