I’ve seen this kind of post before.
E said that her instant messaging program lets her know when J’s computer has been idle more than a certain number of minutes, this being information she uses in her speculations about whether J is talking to, emailing, or having sex with the other woman.
I suggested the obvious: Delete him from the program.
She responded with the obvious: This is her only remaining connection to him.
But even the second time around, it’s really important to think about this relationship between two people and a technology. Presence changes behavior, allows new ways of interacting with people. Yet, what are the psychological and sociological consequences of this? Fascinating.
Interesting. The idle time is kind of a strange thing isn’t it. On iChat you can turn off idle time tracking.
I’m another member of your random audience whom you don’t know, but I know quite a few people (including myself) who sometimes read into IM idle times that way…
There is other information that you can send besides idle time (or lack thereof if you turn it off)… for example, our friend Jeff Schwartz uses a iChat hack (iChat status) to display what song iTunes is currently playing.
I found myself inclined toward that sort of behavior recently. I found the following quote that sums up the general phenomenon rather poetically.
(You people don’t IM during sex? How bizarre.)
This is yet another example of “publicy” – a word I coined to describe the (Marshall McLuhan Laws of Media) reversal of privacy when accelerated to a high degree by instantaneous communications. Publicy occurs when we reveal in a public way (and largely under our control) what was once private and/or intimate. The ultimate publicy is perhaps the “outering” of private mind and stream of consciousness via weblogs; the now defunct Jenni-cam was an early example of publicy.
McLuhan noted (in 1964) that “we transfer our consciousness” to the world’s “electronic nervous system” via computer networks. In doing so, what was inside our heads is “outered” for all to see, hear and feel – this includes fuelling the imaginations of former girl/boy-friends.