A provocative little picture-essay from Peggy Nelson that argues we've moved from the etiquette of individuals communicating with each other one at a time to a new mode of always-on, always-connected communication:
We’re beginning to inhabit ad hoc, overlapping, always-on virtual salons—you’re talking to someone, and then you both get pulled off into different directions, to form different shapes and vectors within the conversations, and then come together again, having never really been apart. You can even have multiple conversations via multiple media with the same person at one time. Single conversations are one-dimensional chess. Once you master multiplicity, who’s to say how far you will go? Correction: how far we will go. For we will all go together, wherever it is that we are going.
Don't underestimate, however, the value of solitude and introspection - an ability which will become more, not less valuable, in this new age.
