What I'm seeing from analysts studying Twitter, IM usage, etc, is an increasing trend, especially among teens and 20-somethings, to basically conduct all their social life through their cell phones. What Twitter gives you that IM doesn't is a sort of "broadcast what I'm doing". An example I saw was "Going to XXX for lunch; anybody hungry?" which resulted in 4 or 5 people who happened to be nearby gathering for lunch. A sort of "cloud" of social information, an awareness of your social group and its activities that reflects electronic closeness rather than physical.
Carried even farther, you get "gathering in the XXX lounge in SL", resulting in Second Life casual get-togethers. This is the kind of thing that happens in my office by people strolling down the hall saying "lunch?" -- which doesn't work if the people you work with are more than a 1-minute stroll away.
The challenge for us old guys seems to be, as you point out, finding ways to track many channels of information at once. We are (most of us!) reasonably good at screening our physical environment for relevant info in the total buzz; there's a good chance, for instance, that if you and I both happened to be in one of the downtown SEPTA stations at the same time we would notice each other despite the crowds and noise. It's not so different to imagine screening the information environment.
Which isn't to say I've figured out how to do it...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
pmat.livejournal.com at 12:48pm on 11/04/2008![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Carried even farther, you get "gathering in the XXX lounge in SL", resulting in Second Life casual get-togethers. This is the kind of thing that happens in my office by people strolling down the hall saying "lunch?" -- which doesn't work if the people you work with are more than a 1-minute stroll away.
The challenge for us old guys seems to be, as you point out, finding ways to track many channels of information at once. We are (most of us!) reasonably good at screening our physical environment for relevant info in the total buzz; there's a good chance, for instance, that if you and I both happened to be in one of the downtown SEPTA stations at the same time we would notice each other despite the crowds and noise. It's not so different to imagine screening the information environment.
Which isn't to say I've figured out how to do it...