Aleks Krotoski explores what makes a space a place and how digital technology is influencing the places we call home.
In The Digital Human: Home Aleks asks what turns a space into a place and whether we really need bricks and mortar anymore, when home can be anywhere you can go online.
Aleks visits Porter Ranch just outside of Los Angeles where residents were told to evacuate because of a gas leak. Linda Matthies decided to stay despite fears over her health. Her sense of home focuses strongly on the comforts of home and her many possessions acquired over her lifetime. Her sense of home is very much tied up with the physical.
In contrast Josh Surtees was able to create a digital space that he could call home. Josh moved to Trinidad to work as a journalist. He fell in love and when his girlfriend moved to London after two months they created a virtual home through skype and successfully continued their relationship.
In Downtown LA Aleks meets Elvina Beck a digital nomad who has started a company allowing millennials to rent a communal pod with wifi access that they can make home. For her home is mobile, as long as there is online access, home can be anywhere.
Architect Sam Jacobs understands the important link between home and identity. He argues that the division between the private realm iof home and the public realm is breaking down because people are exposing their identities online. Home is now one of the places that you can in fact broadcast your identity to a much wider audience.
Travel writer Pico Iyer realised when he saw his home in California burn to the ground that home is not about bricks or mortar or access to wifi but should be found within ourselves.
The idea of the 21st entury house, is not actually that old so will digital technologies change how and were we decide to live in the future.
Produced by Kate Bissell.
Last on
Clip
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The erosion of domesticity in the home.
Duration: 01:10
Elvina Beck
Elvina beck lives in Los Angles and has started a company called Podshare for who she calls ‘Podestrians’ or digital nomads whose sense of home is mobile because home is where ever you can gain online access.Â
Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer is a renowned travel writer who has been travelling for 40 years.  Pio has never owned his own home but after he visited Japan and set up home there he stopped searching for where he should live. But after many years of travel Pico has learnt that home should be found from within.Â
Sam Jacob
Sam is an architect who runs Sam Jacobs Studio, a collaborative architect and design practice that makes buildings, places and objects.  He has dealt with many clients over the years and understands well our relationship between home and identity.Â
Linda Matthias
Linda used to travel a lot around the US in the hotel industry but coming back to home always felt like returning to a sanctuary. When a gas leak forced many residents to leave Porter Ranch, despite suffering headaches and nose bleeds she couldn’t bring herself to leave her home.Â
Josh Surtees
Josh lives in Paris with his girlfriend but at the start of their relationship they lived across the world from each in Trinidad and London. They managed to keep their relationship going by spending all of their time in the home together because their skype was always on, even taking the i- pad to bed as they fell asleep.
Broadcasts
- Mon 11 Apr 2016 16:30´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
- Tue 2 Aug 2016 23:30´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
Podcast
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The Digital Human
Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world