the presence paradox - lite communication tools

Lite communications tools such as Twitter & Instant Messaging & SMS txting offer the promise of ambient intimacy or the less confronting option of ambient presence. Little slivers of meaning 'n' grooming flick(er)ing between people.

Leisa Reichelt's ambient intimacy post positions these lite tools as mostly "phatic". I am not convinced that we are very good at correctly recognising "phatic" vs. "semantic" acts of speech. Most of our corporate communications (emails from the CEO, townhall meetings, intranet pages) position themselves as meaningful but are frequently meaningless. Instead they convey another set of messages around status, order & control. They are, in fact, almost purely phatic.

The further you move away from the tools supposedly concerned with meaning into the tools associated with grooming, the more actual meaning you will find. The corporate communications department rarely thinks of IM as a comms channel (thankfully). Let's hope they don't find out.

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I think I sent my first email back in 1993. That period is all a bit hazy. I think I was doing it for a friend. But that could just be post-hoc self-justification.

About 35 trillion emails will be sent this year. That is approximately 17 emails a day for every person on this planet. Somewhat depressingly about 40% of these (7 per person) are spam.

This compares with 620 billion SMS texts in the first quarter of 2007 (which will mean 3 trillion for the year presumably). Or the 167 billion minutes of international telephone calls made in 2005.

That's a whole lot of talking going on. (N.B. I'd love to know the total number of phone calls made worldwide 2007 - anyone got that data?)

Which makes the number of blogs, wikis, etc out there look pretty puny.

Microblogging

James D talks about microblogging & Luis talks about a specific application for emergency services. I've noted my personal preferences recently but for me microblogging has got F.A. to do with blogging. My posts tend towards the terse but I generally break the 160 character barrier. For me, a blog post has to have an idea in there. It may not be yours. It may not be any good. But it's there.

I see Twitter & Facebook status info as presencing technologies and as James notes, they have more to do with SMS & IM than blogs & wikis. And these will have important uses for people working remotely from each other (i.e. increasingly all of us).

N.B. As a side bet, literary forms will emerge out of presencing technologies. SMS poetry for example.