Continuing on the subject of ambient intimacy…

Flooding space and time.
Leisa Reichelt in receiver magazine on Ambient Intimacy:

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.

Ambient is for the lightness, the atmospheric, non-directional and distributed nature of the communication. These are communications that are one to many; they’re not quite broadcast and yet not exactly conversational; they flood over a somewhat defined space. Within that space is intimacy: the closeness, familiarity and warmth that this kind of communication can create and the ever-present network of friends available wherever you can access the internet, or even just send a text message.

Triviality is relative.
Continuing with Lisa,

… On its own, such a status update may seem trivial but to examine an update in isolation is to miss the point of the social system that is at play here. These apparently trivial updates are really critical to maintaining connection with a network of often loose ties – a network that can give rich social rewards to those who participate.

… Critics allege that the closeness we feel from this kind of communication is artificial and potentially damaging: that it causes cognitive dissonance, with our brain thinking it is experiencing closeness, when it actually isn’t.

… I’m the last person to suggest that ambient intimacy could, or should, replace the other kinds of intimacy we’re already familiar with and fond of. However, the virtual nature of the interaction doesn’t make it any less real. We may be getting to know people differently and sharing with them differently but something important is happening here.

Please, discard the rhetoric and value judgments: the tools are here, part of our lives, creating new, replacing the old, integrating with the existing, finding their place until they due to be replaced themselves.

Humans have always created massive amounts of triviality; perhaps the biggest change is that we’ve never been able to see if so starkly, in such volume, so easily.

Why?

Supply, meet demand.
Why do we participate in online communities large and small? Lisa references a presentation by Tom Coates on social software, pointing to four key reasons:

• Anticipated reciprocity
• Reputation
• Sense of efficacy
• Identification with a group

In short, we wouldn’t participate if we didn’t get something out of it, and even the greatest trivialities “pay” in some way; the key is to find the communities where the trivial matters.

To think about why we participate in online communities, consider: why do we participate in offline communities?

Humanity survives.
“It’s not about being poked and prodded, it’s about exposing more surface area for others to connect with” (link); but are we really considering what areas we are exposing and what connections we are creating?

The incentives behind creating groups are hardly new; social software provides new tools and mediums but fills the same fundamental human needs.

As we use online tools, reflect back to how we live offline; humans are trivial, petty, grandstanding, self-promotional, thoughtful, shy, mysterious, interesting, intelligent, idiotic. These do not change; to expect otherwise would be farcical.

And that’s ok. We’re human.

So love the ones we are with, pick our spots to challenge, discard our dreams of changing everyone, and find the right people to love. The transaction costs of connecting have never been lower. Pick your spots and engage on your terms, in your communities, for your reasons. Or don’t. But be happy doing it.