Presence and IntComm WG

[Candace Holman <>]

At 01:13 PM 1/3/2005, you wrote:
> A friend sent this to me and posed a good question,
> "does presence and convergence solve or exacerbate this problem?"
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/1128/cover.html
> I'm interested in your feedback.

There are many different issues discussed in the article.  I suppose your 
friend is asking whether presence and convergence will help us to cope with 
an increasingly busy life, marked by constant interruptions and "cognitive 
overload".  This is a good justification for offering a manual override on 
published presence status, so that you can choose to appear temporarily 
offline even if you really aren't.  (Some people call this lying. :-)  The 
finer the granularity, the better the implementation - e.g. I'd like to 
dump a cold sales call to voice mail but set a special ringtone for 
messages from a critical source.

I like Levy's paper subtitle: "Technology and the Politics of Absence" but 
I'm a little put off by his suggestion that we need a national movement to 
convince ourselves it's okay to take a vacation.  I hope my tax dollars 
aren't paying for his research.  Configurable presence won't help the 
people who don't take their vacations, or who secretly hope for hands-free 
driving so they can finally eat breakfast as well as talk on the phone 
while getting to work.

Candace