Social presence tools -- like Twitter, Facebook, Plazes, MySpace, and
Jaiku -- offer us a simple way to remain connected to those that
matter to us. Building on the legacy of IM presence, this new
generation of social tools makes the Web into a village, a third
place, where we can sense people's comings-and-goings, their everyday
annoyances and joys, and receive a wink or pat on the back from people
thousands of miles away or just down the hall. Connection has its
costs, however. The transition from a page-based Web to a Web based on
the flow of traffic -- streams of messages traveling through social
networks -- is speeding up, based on RSS and the meteoric rise of
social presence tools. In order to adapt to this new Web -- or perhaps
because of it -- we will have to adopt a new mindset: to rewire our
neurons, and rework our ethics and etiquette to match the flowing
world that is emerging. Luckily, it is a better state of consciousness
than the one we leave behind.
June 25 and 26, 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark
