In general, I'm on the late end of
the early adopter spectrum. So I'm aware of new-ish trends particularly
in technology and media, but usually watch curiously for some level of
critical mass before investing time or money to participate. For a
couple years, I've been happily among the millions now participating in
the use of web-based social networking tools - Twitter, Facebook and
the like. You know the story - users tend to love these tools while
nonusers sniff that they are "time-wasters" or just "noise." Who would
want to know the silly or mundane things you learn on Facebook and
Twitter? Who's got the time or interest to be bothered with such
trivialities, right?
That's absurd.
I've always imagined that one of the
upsides of heaven is that the limits for interacting with people I know
or love or in whom I'm interested simply don't exist. We Americans move
repeatedly over our lifetimes from place to place and make
relationships and then those relationships fade away as we move away.
Who among us considers this ideal? Don't we all have any number of
friends we wish we could spend more time with? Or experts we know we
could learn from? Wise people to whom we just want to listen?
Facebook creates a digital web of
connections mirroring, as its founder Mark Zuckerberg calls it, "your
social graph". Twitter offers direct access to unfiltered thoughts from
virtually anyone. I've always described Facebook to skeptics as like a
never ending cocktail party with all my friends and, importantly, only all my friends. Twitter of course, is that constantly percolating sea of everything, it's value maximized by your own curation. Follow what you're interested in, ignore the rest.
Yet many still reject these tools,
appealing either to personal preference or nearly moralist judgment
that this type of communication is inferior. My friend Chris Huertz
even imagines Mother Teresa reminding us that "digital relationships
and virtual communities can never be an authentic proxy for human
interaction."
Which brings me to my point - there's
a value here that is worth recognizing and which may broaden the appeal
of online socializing. In 2007, a user experience designer named
Leisa Reichelt wrote a
blog post about
an idea she dubbed "ambient intimacy." Her definition addresses
specifically my hope for heaven noted above: "Ambient intimacy is about
being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and
intimacy that you wouldn't usually have access to, because
time and space conspire to make it impossible." (italics mine)
I find this concept very energizing
and a perfect explanation for what I like most about online social
interactions. While this ambient intimacy has value as an end in itself
the surprising benefit is that my "real life" relationships have
been enhanced. In just the past week I've had the chance to see a
number of friends (and professional acquaintances that may yet become
friends) that I haven't seen lately - and in each case, conversation
flowed even more easily simply due to my "ambient" knowledge of
generally what they'd been up to.
Ambient knowledge is by nature
incomplete - and that's ok. It's not about obsessing and keeping up
with every post, every status update or every set of vacation photos.
It is about more connections yielding deeper connections. Quantity yielding quality. And who wouldn't want that?