When the new technologies of radio and TV arrived, they continued a tradition of bringing the family together to listen to or watch a broadcast. Much like the Victrola that came before, families everywhere huddled around the RCA. With TV, we even scheduled meals to be eaten in front of the TV to watch our favorite TV shows – tuning into while eating TV dinners on TV trays (“Ed Sullivan” anyone?). Family slide shows and family home movies were also celebratory mainstays for many of us.
But the arrival of ‘personal’ entered our lives. From the first ‘personal audio’ defined by Sony’s Walkman to today’s ‘personal computing’ realized as smartphones, tablets, computers does just the opposite, it pushes the family apart. Each of us on our device, doing our thing alone.
To compensate, we’ve embraced ‘sharing’ to let others know what we’ve found, what we are doing. An eternal broadcast of one, but ultimately alienating.
Our Family Lives is not a ‘sharing’ service. It’s “We” technology. It is a come together, collaborative, let’s do this as a group technology. Yet, OFL, recognizes the asynchronous nature of modern life. It is very difficult to get the family together at the same place and the same time.
OFL allows you ‘virtually’ to come together on your schedule. The family doesn’t all need to be together or in the same place at the same time, but you all derive the benefit as though you had. There is a result, a reward for participating — your family dialogues continuously shaped and contributed by all, experienced and then reinvigorated with further, immediate contributions of added or created mementos.
In the best of all possible worlds we would hope to spend valuable time together. Our Family Lives offers a way to bridge that hope with a tangible, rewarding new technology.