Ambient intimacy & feeling presence

Interesting post from Leisa Reichelt on Twitter and what she terms "ambient intimacy" and what I tend to think of as feeling presence;

It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.

Knowing these details creates intimacy. (It also saves a lot of time when you finally do get to catchup with these people in real life!) It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.

I particularly liked her (via Ian Curry) likening it to the way we check in with friends and acquaintences in passing.

It’s basically blogging reduced to what the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin called “the phatic function.” Like saying “what’s up?” as you pass someone in the hall when you have no intention of finding out what is actually up, the phatic function is communication simply to indicate that communication can occur. It made me think of the light, low-content text message circles Mizuko Ito described existing among Japanese teens - it’s not so important what gets said as that it’s nice to stay in contact with people. These light exchanges typify the kind of communication that arises among people who are saturated with other forms of communication.

It reminded me of this presentation I saw a couple of years ago from Matt Webb. Very interesting stuff, and fascinating to see how the thinking behind his ideas is manifesting itself in things like twitter and status updates on Facebook.