Page 41 - 83628_NSAA_SummerVol26

Stranger than Fiction The Simulated Place
The story is (hopefully) fictitious. No one would be so igno- Technology changes things. Technology creates a third type
rant of the painful consequences of checking text messages of reality, a “scene,” which simulates a place but in the virtual
while speeding down the side of a mountain . . . would they? world. Like a place, every website and app is designated for
And yet, in some ways this is exactly how we live our a particular purpose and attempts to define what matters
lives. No one really “drives” anymore—we just get behind most in its particular context. But unlike a place—which has
the wheel, pull out our phones, and take our chances. physical boundaries and must be traveled to—you can enter
This gets at a core issue. Before the smartphone arrived a scene at anytime, anywhere, thanks to the smartphone.
and demolished all boundaries to access, the places we occu- So technology “solves” the idea of space; there is no need
pied guided the attention we paid. But increasingly our for space anymore. All space can be filled with scenes, add-
spaces are infiltrated by that bastion of distraction, the ing the feeling of purpose and productivity to otherwise
Trojan horse known as the smartphone. empty moments—on the commute, waiting in the exam
The ski industry is magnificently well suited to pro- room, literally anywhere.
vide a key service to its constantly But there’s an unintended
connected customers: reconnect consequence: Technology ends
them to what matters most, by up downgrading meaningful
transforming “space” into “place.” places back into mere space. It’s
why some people can’t resist com-
From Space to Place menting on Instagram at the

To clarify what I’m referring to, If our customers’ attention movie theater. Or why we feel the
“space” is boundless, continuous, deems every physical location need to reply immediately to the
and inherently lacks meaning. A text message or email we receive
“place,” on the other hand, is a to be meaningless space, at work. Or even why we pull out
bounded portion of space, desig- our phones when we drive.
nated to be used for a particular an area to be filled with the While passionate, core ski-
purpose and directing its occu- ers and snowboarders do tend to
pant toward what matters most in virtual scenes provided by the value and appreciate being “in
that context. You could say that device in their pocket, how do the now” within the place of the
space is simply the measurable mountain environment, tech-
separation between our places. we maintain relevance? nology tugs at them too. While
To understand the implica- it can be a useful tool on the
tions for our business, we have to mountain (say, to communi-
fully grasp this concept. The dif- cate with a buddy on a differ-
ference between space and place is ent trail, to track performance,
not reliant on any physical feature or find out what the lodge lunch
or external element. Our attention specials are), if people are paying
creates both. more attention to their devices than the sun sparkling on the
For example, the time you spent in the car this morning snow, or the alpenglow at the end of the day, they aren’t able
on your daily commute is merely traveling through space, on to fully appreciate the place.
the path from your home (place) to your work (place). But to This is the crux of the challenge. If our customers’ atten-
a visiting tourist, the exact same drive is part of the experience tion deems physical locations to be meaningless space to
of a place: the town itself. be filled with virtual scenes provided by the device in their
Another example: The exam room starts as a space, where pocket, how do we maintain relevance?
you must simply twiddle your thumbs awaiting the doctor.
But as soon as the doctor enters the room, it’s transformed into A Hidden Opportunity
a place, where both occupants are engaged in the purposeful The power of the virtual world is its portability, but that
pursuit of health. Notice how the separation between space portability implies a lack of density. It doesn’t create true
and a place can be measured in time as well as distance. places, only simulated scenes. And scenes are largely

SUMMER 2018 | NSAA JOURNAL | 39