Silent sociality

Brady Forrest from O'Reilly Radar wrote a nice description of Jaiku when a new version of the site was launched yesterday at ETel. I especially agree with Brady's last point (on which Kathy Sierra has written an excellent piece): new presence services should not burden your days with more interruptions. It's great to know that your friends are like just around the corner, and that you can anytime have a break and amuse yourself by going and seeing what they're up to, and then go back –unless their presence call for some kind of response. It's like some kind of silent sociality that leaves a feeling that you're not alone, but neither are you randomly disturbing other people in your exposure-dependent existential hunger.

Comments

[silvana]

I wonder why is that we feel like writing what we are doing at the moment, but not really how we are feeling being where we are or doing what we are doing. I think Jaiku is a nice presence tool, but if we don't express our feelings, are we really present somewhere? emotions are the drivers of reality and life, and maybe when we open up enough to say how we actually feel being where we are, we could maybe really say, I'm here, and the rest could probably really sense your presence as well.

[Aviva Gabriel]

You're the first to really capture the allure of the social play that is Twitter & Jaiku. Your words are pretty emblematic, I feel, and will hopefully spread along the stream of speculation and wonder on why we want to jabber and tweet our days away! Here's your perceptive, and eminently quotable quote, just to pinpoint the phrasing I'm "gushing" over here:

"It's like some kind of silent sociality that leaves a feeling that you're not alone, but neither are you randomly disturbing other people in your exposure-dependent existential hunger."

Your words are evocative of that yummy, comfy feeling of hearing my family's subdued babbling downstairs while I burrowed under a cozy quilt with a gripping thriller; not alone, but surrounded by a simple, undemanding presence that gave me context and purpose...yet, this warmth came without the obligatory expectation to interact, pay attention to, entertain, empathize, or in any way be "on" as payment for the sense of belonging.

I dimly remember those days, before the angst of existential embarassment and hollowness began to seep, acidly, into my life as I crept and leapt toward my teen years.

Ah, for the simple "being with" that we all aspire to. Maybe for some of us, "microblogging," or whatever it wants to be called, fulfills that wish, at least a little bit.