"What is the nature of auratic power? Start with a thing that beckons you."
- Bruce Nussbaum
Nussbaum has hit on the keys to the code for connectivity - not technological connectivity - human connectivity in an age where technology has the ability to help or hinder the creation of self and community.
The discussion of aura here, with insights attributed to
Walter Benjamin (who seems like a must read), is on a much higher level than which products or people are perceived as sexy in the moment. It's also not a discussion of colorful emanations from organic bodies. It is instead an indicator of where we are drawn, and how we choose to draw ourselves. When Apple products are insanely great, they are best extensions of ourselves which join us to a community of those who choose the same values in design, execution, productivity, competence, and reliability. By extension, you can infer trust and safety being built in this community. For example, the new version of iTunes is a breach of all that - a crack in the infrastructure of this community. It builds frustration and anger and breeds mistrust. (And I do have issues with
Miss Trust.)
Now take away "Apple products"in the above and substitute anything that beckons you. There are some lovely embedded keys to who we are and want to be in here. We all have an aura - a natural one. We may have a projected one, too, but the natural one won't go unnoticed. If those two are too disparate most of what you project on people and in community is noise and static.
If Apple has an aura that beckons certain types of people and builds community around its products, then what might you be beckoning with your aura? What is the aura of the art, music, poetry, food, or products that you create? What auras pull you into their gravitational fields?
