Candleblog

I’m 39 years old today.  I was told there would be cake.  Perhaps my weighted companion cube has some for me.

Actually, I’m getting all sorts of well-wishes from far flung folks on the interwebz.  That’s one thing you can definitely say in social networking’s favor — it’s good at keeping you up to date on birthdays.

Speaking of keeping vague tabs on close (as well as not-so-close) associates via the ‘net, the NYTimes ran a great piece the other day about the pseudo-psychic effect that all this micro-information has on our lives, an effect social scientists call “ambient awareness.”  It’s a fascinating read that resonated strongly with me…

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

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“It’s like I can distantly read everyone’s mind,” Haley went on to say. “I love that. I feel like I’m getting to something raw about my friends. It’s like I’ve got this heads-up display for them.” It can also lead to more real-life contact, because when one member of Haley’s group decides to go out to a bar or see a band and Twitters about his plans, the others see it, and some decide to drop by — ad hoc, self-organizing socializing. And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.