co-presence and online interaction;

[eric.gleave]

you are at dinner at a friends house, their cell rings, and they ignore you for 10 min in preference for another social interaction.

prefering the distant other makes the copresent feel devaluad, isolated. and is an example of the encroachment of the electronic into the physical.

phyhsical presence used to be a stronger proxy for social space.

web cam--

[mstern]

One of my favorite topics becuase it is an everyday reality. People argued that the land-line telephone would do same thing (i.e., people will ingore othere people in the room in order to communicate with some one on the telephone). However, when people left the house to go, say, for a walk, there was a certain level of intimacy. Now the cell CAN go with you thus the prescence may never be only the two of you.

The question becomes: How will norms continue to develop in terms of when it is appropriate to take the call (answer the IM, the email) and when it is not. I suspect that many social factors and social spaces will determine these norms