Understanding unavailability in a world of constant connection

Abstract

telephone or IM, which provided mediated co-presence when one was in the vicinity of a landline phone or PC, today’s mobile devices provide constant co-presence. Instant messaging is often combined with text messaging or proprietary messaging clients (e.g., BlackBerry Messenger, Apple’s iMessage, etc.), such that today’s teens send hundreds of messages per day to stay in touch with family and friends [3]. People are assumed to be constantly co-present, and thus, constantly available for conversation. This is taking a toll. There is evidence that all of these opportunities for interaction cause overload and stress. A recent Pew report suggests that nearly a third of respondents periodically turn off their phones just to take a break from all of the interaction opportunities they provide [4]. Sherri Turkle’s recent book suggests we are paying more attention to our devices than to each other [5]. Others report feeling disco-presence (i.e., being on the phone at the same time) could offer a similar experience. And one could inquire about another’s availability for mediated co-presence by calling in a more modern sense; namely, by dialing the phone and waiting for a response on the other end [1]. Instant messaging (IM) and chat systems, which became very popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, changed this process again [2]. With these systems, one had a list of contacts who were co-present at any given time. Co-presence, for many users of these systems, suggested availability for conversation and was often reason enough to start one. The contact list made co-presence even easier to coordinate. More recently, there has been a larger socio-technical shift that we believe has significant consequences for how people coordinate around communication. In contrast to Historically, the problem of coordinating opportunities for real-time communication has been dominated by the problem of co-presence. Before there was any interactive media, people had to be in the same place to talk. Visiting somebody’s house (“calling,” in the early sense) to see if they were available or scheduling a time to meet were both good ways of coordinating. Early media such as the telephone changed this process a bit, in that people no longer needed to be physically co-present to talk. Mediated Understanding Unavailability in a World of Constant Connection