Ambient awareness

This NYT article talks about the current online tools we use nowadays. Some notes: - ambient awareness: A new term used to describe the incessant online contact. - "online awareness as a reaction to social isolation" : - Dunbar number: the estimated average number of people one can connect to at a time; 150. For apes, the number is 55. - Socialness through modern technology essentially helps the weak ties, not the already strong ties or the Dunbar number. - “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems, since your friends are so similar to you to be of much help when a new problem emerges: "outsourcing your life" - Dangers: Parasocial relationships, as with a celebrity? A common plague of Facebook: the recent ex. - dynamics of small-town life revitalizing: "So we’re going back to a more normal place, historically. If you look at human history, the idea that you would drift through life, going from new relation to new relation, that’s very new. It’s just the 20th century."