hugo's thoughts

I’ve always been passionated about computers. I could spend ages just rearranging my folders and trying out .html pages without even owning an internet connection. I loved video games, I cannot recall the number of hours I spent wandering the streets of Liberty City. Then I got connected, online. And I spent my entire high school playing counter-strike, chatting on Quakenet. This was my outlet, my second home. I really felt connected, like I belonged. The more I would sit in front of an interactive screen (I always hated TV), the happier I would get. In 2011, I was starting my 2nd startup, it was almost natural. Being a hardcore connected human, I always boiled with ideas, and the urge to act that comes with it.

Last year, a game-changing thing happened. I was diagnosed with a rare cornea dystrophia, basically meaning that one of my eye would almost get useless in a decade, and that the same would probably happen to my other eye. I knew all about it, it’s a genetic disorder. My grandfather had it, my mother too. It was a coin flip. Losing that coin flip made the future I envisioned for myself fade away. Like that, in a fraction of a second, with an embarrassed ‘Oh, you have it’ from the ophthalmologist. Because I knew what would happen from then.

I was pissed. At that time, we had just raised $100k with oocto.com and we were starting to get some results. I was pissed because I felt like I didn’t have enough time to do all the hustling we needed to do already. I remember saying ‘I don’t have time for this bullshit eye-stuff’ to my mother.

And a couple of months later, it happened. My first cornea ulcer. What you need to know about Lattice Corneal Dystrophy, is that it continuously scratches your cornea, getting you to slowly but steadily see blurrier. It also makes your eye weaker, so these ulcers happen regularly. Basically a hole in your eye. At first, you just feel like you have dust in your eye, the next morning you can’t bear light anymore and it feels like you are shoved a needle in the eye.

What happens next is really interesting. As you can’t bear light anymore, you have to stay in the dark for 4 or 5 days. Yes, that means you can’t stare at a screen, neither smartphone nor computer, and you surely can’t read in the dark. You basically have to face your (deepest) thoughts all day long. Alone. You might think that’s torture, and to a certain extent that could be. But I learned something the hard way, the getting-thrown-into-a-pool way:

One of the most accurate measurement of happiness is how you handle your own company without distractions.

How you handle being alone with yourself with no way of escaping. Suddenly, there’re no conditions to your happiness but yourself. The famous ‘Know thyself’ Delphi quote takes on its full meaning, and during these 5 days in the dark, you start practicing and learn this skill. Think about it like an intense workout program, where you train your inner self.

I’ve had 3 ulcers in 9 months, and they got me to settle my mind on things I would never have confronted. Moreover, ulcers tend to arise when I’m deeply tensed, stressed, not at peace. It feels like it’s my body that triggers this alone time like a fuse so I can settle things down.

And slowly going blind from one eye got me to rethink some of my assumptions. Some of the things I use to take for granted. And it got me to appreciate every little things in a more mindful way.

So yes, becoming blind made me see clearer :)

I deeply believe that we are as happy as the quality of the relationships we have with people. And I think that technology has done an amazing job at tricking us into the opposite. More friends, more interactions, more attention, more likes.

I’ve been using Facebook for 6 years now, and they were doing a great job at helping me catch up with (old) friends and family as I was studying abroad. Then the years passed by, and I added people I encountered on a personal and a professional level. Quietly, Facebook replaced twitter at sharing links, getting links, and discovering new people. When they smartly got engaged to Instagram, this couple accounted for 90% of the content I shared on the web.

I was a happy user, the two services let me easily share to an audience that would quickly respond with likes and comments.

But then I asked myself, do I really share with people when posting something?

No, I don’t. I show. I don’t want to engage in any particular way, I just want you to see the cool thing I’m doing that looks even cooler with this Instagram vintage filter. Then I’m waiting for likes/comments as a reward, but certainly not as a two way relationship that “share” would induce. Honestly, we could easily replace the “share” button on these services with a “show” button.

And showing doesn’t fill you up, it doesn’t make you ultimately happy. It’s like filling a glass with a hole. Plus, when your average 500 Facebook acquaintances does that, you’re overloaded with shallow stories of people you don’t really know or care about that you can endlessly read with your iPhones, basically everywhere. Going to Facebook has become the equivalent of opening the fridge & staring inside, even though you’re not hungry.And we’re doing it, a lot.

That’s why I gave Path a chance. I wanted to stop showing to people I don’t really know, and start sharing with people who really matter. And deepens those relationships. Because this race towards showing is greedy, they want all you attention (cf. Facebook business model). In a few years I saw myself see/call/share my family less, always busy pursuing quantity.

And using Path has been great so far.

First, you share moments with people that already love you, so you really feel like sharing who you are. Not showing someone cooler.

Second, you see stories from people you’d usually not see on Facebook. Yourmom/dad/sister/brother/cousins/grandma/grandpas, and that’s important! And for those who’d say "Yeah, then you don’t have to call them anymore", it’s wrong. You’ll do it more often, it gets you to actually talk about something.

Third, the “out of sight out of mind" syndrome tends to disappear, as you tend to share more when you’re abroad. And we move a lot these days.

That’s my experience, my reality. You may find that it does(n’t) apply to you. What I can encourage you to do though, is just notice the difference betweensharing and showing in your use of social medias and wonder:

"Does it makes me happier to show or to share?". And let your journey begins :)

I’ve always been a Facebook enthousiast. As a relatively early (French) adopter, I also quickly became an early evangelist, urging my friends to sign up so they could check out my photo albums.

I deeply believe that technology is expanding human capacities, and in this case, social capabilities. I used to spend hours chatting on IRC, discovering new people, and connecting with them. It made me happy. Early 2007, these hours were then spent on Facebook, discovering friends of friends, an activity we now call Cyberstalking. At the time, it was new, it was exciting, I was excited.

Then — slowly and silently — I added every person I knew, and Facebook became this giant social retainer where I collect and store my social raw material. The service evolved, grew into internet’s social spin, and I spent more and more time on it while chatting, surfing friends’ profile or refreshing the feed. Facebook became e-ubiquitous.

And with this movement logically came the IPO, which was something Zuckerberg’s was reluctant to go with as he thought an IPO would “ruin innovation in exchange for doing what will please shareholders and drive stock prices”. It clearly meant creating a conflict between Facebook’s vision and Facebook’s stock goals. Again, you improve what you measure, and the stock market expects Facebook to win the battle for eyeballs in the internet display area.

I know that Facebook isn’t a social business, and that it’s purpose is driven by profits, nothing wrong with that. But it creates a misalignment.

Facebook is now working hard not to make the world more open and connected, but to always get more users spend more time browsing the service. And they’re good at it! So good that they tricked people into feeling that browsing Facebook made them less lonely, that being alone was something to eradicate, something made possible by Facebook’s omnipresence in your pocket (yes, mobile).

And now Facebook Home. A step forward in the competition for your time and your eyeballs. I invite you to watch this Facebook Home ad, it really sums it up. This time they’re not competing with Google, Twitter, or Skype for your online attention, they’re competing with you for your offline attention.

That’s an issue. For two main reasons:

First, we don’t have more time. We still have 24 hours a day, and a lot of contenders aiming for those 1440 minutes. The competition is so fierce that they start to compete with you by scrounging minutes out of your offline day. But your day is not getting bigger. The competition is.

Second, we now know that we are happier when we stay in the moment. The more our mind wanders, the less happy we can be. How is splitting up our time and attention with continual solicitation from our Facebook Home enabled phone is making us more present therefore more happy?

Peter Thiel’s early investment in Facebook was driven by the metric that — at the time — users spent more time on Zuck’s service than watching TV.Newsfeeding is the new zapping.

Where are we in all that? When are we alone with ourselves? At ease with ourselves? When lays our self-reflecting time?

To get some perspective on that, you may want to try a couple of things:

• Delete the Facebook App of your phone, only use the mobile web version. And notice this moment when you need to check your feed. Ask yourselfwhy, and what you could do instead.
• Get a new first-website-you-type-when-you-open-a-new-tab reflex. Try opening TED.com instead of Facebook.com more often.

I tried it for the last couple of months, and I love it. I’ll be pleased to hear about your opinions and experiences!