NY TImes has a piece on Digital Intimacy. Social scientists call it ambient awareness; the incessant online contact provides by services like Facebook’s newsfeed and Twitter. Each update is insignificant on its own but taken together over time, coalesces into a sophisticated  portrait, a kind of ESP.

Awareness tools aren’t as cognitively demanding as an e-mail message. E-mail is something you have to stop to open and assess. It’s personal; someone is asking for 100 percent of your attention. In contrast, ambient updates are all visible on one single page in a big row, and they’re not really directed at you. This makes them skimmable, like newspaper headlines; maybe you’ll read them all, maybe you’ll skip some.

“Things like Twitter have actually given me a much bigger social circle. I know more about more people than ever before.”

I am finding this to be true. As I follow more A list people my awareness of technology trends grows and following local people expands my social network.

There are more insights in this lengthy article. Please read it. I feel it will be one of the most important of 2008.