Posting

[alicebentley]

Every day, often several times a day, I catch up on LiveJournal, make a quick pass at FaceBook, sometimes even cruise Twitter when I'm not at a convention (the main time I use Twitter). I love the way this lets me know how (some of) my friends are doing, what they're up to, what's happening in their worlds.

And yet, I am very rarely inspired to add in my own posts. I'll comment far more often than I'll initiate. And I'm not sure just why that is. I know if you were all here with me, if this was some sort of tangible gathering, I would be busy showing you this clever webcomic update, enthusing about which of two major projects to choose for my graduate school Capstone, and wistfully hoping for the best as I send off yet another promising job application.

But the truth is, posting here is not at all the same, and only the fact that I really need to get going on that sensitivity analysis for my group report gives me the impetus to not delete this, but hit ... send

Comments

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

I comment a jillion times more often than I post, too. (though I don't have a heck of a lot interesting/positive to post lately)

This post is another data smudge (a lot fuzzier than a point) toward something I've been thinking about for a while, but haven't quite gotten a handle on: a taxonomy of asynchronous communications. We have proliferating electronic media (email, sms/text, lj/facebook/myspace, twitter) which people create social protocols and applications for.
The first one I noticed was in the early business adoption of email, the "asynchronous phone call". Instead of interrupting someone, or playing phone tag, you shoot off a quick email; they reply at their relative convenience; you volly until the item is closed. No one interrupts, no one is interrupted, and the "conversation" is almost exactly what it would have been by phone, but a lot less intrusive.