Social presence & Sherlock

I was re-reading an article yesterday by Rogers & Lea (2005) on 'Social Presence in Distributed Group Environments: the role of Social Identity' and I got to thinking (somewhat convolutedly) about ubiquitous computing and interactivity. And, bizarrely, Sherlock Holmes.

My train of thought (I think) ran something like this:
Rogers & Lea discuss social presence as key to developing meaningful relationships and group dynamics, whether this is virtual or real life. Presence is either social or physical, where social 'refers to being and communicating with the implication that the medium appears to be transformed into a social entity' and physical presence is the 'sense of being physically located somewhere and implies that the medium appears to be invisible.' So, equally, the physical presence can exist in online and offline situations, where the degree of immersion renders the medium transparent.

In 'real' face to face conversation both the social and physical presence exist, in the form of socially learnt context and geographical location. Rogers & Lea claim that this can exist in online situations where the social presence (through our socially constructed identities) is carried as a personal cognitive representation. It is social presence that bonds members of a group together, working for a common cause/set of principles and, paradoxically, 'environments rich in interpersonal information may, in fact, undermine group identity and result in process losses for the collaborating group.'

This links to the uses of storytelling (where the stories are not your own) as a means of revealing aspects of yourself and your personality, and similarly, I think the multiplicity of identity through different media.

So this ties in with ubicomp quite nicely in terms of physical presence and the 'invisible computer'. For me, reading can provide the invisible medium, more so than any other (which may explain my addiction to buying books) but there is a school of thought which suggests that this a dying hobby. Technology changes the way we write. I used to compose essays in their entirety on paper, only using a computer to type up. Now, I switch between the two, using my pc to compose and edit as I write. But I still print them off to re-draft.

Where are the multimedia essays technologists have promised? Combining text, visuals, audio and video? Is it because creating high quality of each compromises the whole? Each media requires a different skill set.

And so, anyone who has managed to keep reading this blog might be asking - where's Sherlock? It was related to lateral thinking and thought processes. I was reminded of Sherlock following Watson's silent thinking, similarly, Poe's character Dupin is able to interrupt a thought conversation at the right point by reflecting on external stimuli. Admittedly, I did say at the start that it was a convoluted link, which mirrors the final thought processes quite neatly. I suppose Joyce's stream of consciousness extends this.