Ambient Intimacy

There are a few phrases , such as "ambient awareness", "infinite proximity", "hyper-connectivity", and"distributed co-presence", that define the concept I'm writing about, but my professor Dr. Burton tipped me of to a new one today that has promising connotations-ambient intimacy, which is the idea that technology makes it possible to have levels of intimacy in relationships that "you wouldn't usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible."  This hearkens back to my thesis about how technology has made the metaphysical become physical, and gives concrete evidence for it (which is great).  I found an interesting slide show by Leisa Reichelt  (note her bio) that not only talks about ambient intimacy, but about all of the different phrases that are used in connection with it that mean essentially the same thing.  

Ambient Intimacy

View more presentations from leisa reichelt.

This slideshow is great and I think it creates a really fascinating image, but the problem, of course, is that there's no dialogue accompanying it, and all of the comments are at least three years old.  As I'm trying to find events that relate to my topic, I'm continually running into this same problem.  Everything has already happened.  All of the hype about ambient intimacy and inter-connectedness and online relationships seems to have hit a peak about five years ago.  This makes it difficult for me to find real-time events to blog about, but I think that it ultimately proves my point better than any upcoming conference could.  Basically, all of the talk about ambient intimacy isn't just hype anymore.  As the internet has taken off and become ingrained in society, these theories about how it impacts relationships have become a reality.  (Could we say that's kind of like how metaphysical ideals have become a reality, just for kicks?)  In a society of digital natives, ambient intimacy is just the way it is.  

The Democratization of Intimacy

I just watched this talk on TED and it really got me fired up about my topic.  Stefana Broadbent is a cognitive scientist at University College who studies the way "our social habits and relationships function and mutate in the digital age".   I really like the phrase she used, "democratization of intimacy", in her talk, because it seems so oxymoronic.

And isn't that what metaphysical poetry is all about?  John Donne was the master of the metaphysical conceit, or pairing together two seemingly unrelated things in a metaphor.  Pairing together the words "democratization" and "intimacy" seems impossible, but through research like Stefana Broadbent's, we know that this phenomenon is happening.

I think this even ties into my post (and thesis) about how technology has made the metaphysical become physical.  They're two ideas that seem contradictory, but upon closer study are really fundamentally linked.  And this is all thanks to technology.  Linking together John Donne and social networking might seem totally off-base, but I think his poetry presents an interesting metaphor for relationships in the digital age.  I'd like to think he'd even be proud to see such a tenuous metaphysical conceit.    

Technology has made the Metaphysical become Physical

This is the first in a series of posts about the paradox presented between John Donne's poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and modern-day, technology-driven relationships.  I argue that as new media tools have become mainstream, all of our relationships have become transcendent of physical distance, a metaphysical ideal Donne cherished.  It is now the relationships that are "elemented" by physical closeness, the type that Donne reserved for "dull, sublunary lovers", that are the ideal.  Essentially, since all of our relationships are transcendent of space, it is the relationships that are transcendent of cyberspace that are the most meaningful.

John Donne wrote "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" as a gift to his wife before he left on a long trip abroad.  To the modern reader, the poem is basically a verbalization of everything a long-distance relationship should stand for.  He emphasizes their spiritual connection, their fidelity, their reliance upon each other, and the joy of their ultimate reunification.  These things are highly valued in today's society and in our pop culture, but perhaps not rightly so.  Technology has profoundly affected the ways in which we form and maintain relationships to the extent that our relationships no longer need to be grounded in real life to be legitimate.

With this in mind, I argue that relationship ideals have been flipped.  Through technology, we have become more than metaphorically able to connect with the people we love no matter where we are, and metaphysical concepts have therefore become a reality. Through a close textual analysis of the "Valediction", an analysis of the philosophical concepts that influenced Donne's writing, and research into the nature of modern relationships, I hope to prove that "keeping it real" is the best way to show our romantic love.

UPDATE (5/3/10):  Just to clarify, I'm using the poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" to prove that our romantic relationships are still essentially the same as John Donne wrote about them being, but, because society has changed so much due to technology, our relationships are strengthened more by physical proximity than by metaphysical connection.  Donne's writing indicates that he would certainly disagree with this, but the cultural phenomena associated with technological advances prove that it is true.

Other Posts:
Ambient Intimacy
Textual Analysis: Profanation of Our Joys (Living in a Post-Facebook Culture)
Textual Analysis: Sublunary Lover's Love (The Importance of "Things as They Really Are")
Textual Analysis: Gold to Aery Thinness Beat (What it Means to be Plugged In)
Textual Analysis: Twin Compasses (Conclusions)


**The above photo is titled "the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable".  Fitting, right?  I also think it's pretty.

Infinite Proximity and Other Things

I think I have a few more posts  to write before I can publish The Blog Post, but I wanted to communicate where I'm at right now.  My working thesis is something like the following:

Through a close reading of John Donne's poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, it can be extrapolated that he viewed romantic relationships that were "elemented" by physical proximity as less meaningful than relationships that were transcendent of it.  However, as social media tools have become more prevalent, we're experiencing the phenomenon of infinite proximity, which means that all relationships are or have the potential to be transcendent of place.  The metaphysical experience of being able to transcend science has become a reality.  This paradoxical reality can be interpreted as beneficial or detrimental to society, but in the end, the lesson to be learned is that technology cannot take the place of the transcendent, spiritual connection between lovers Donne wrote about.  Physical proximity is essential.  Essentially, Donne's metaphor has been flipped.  Right?  

I'm working towards getting a "critical mass" of support for this idea, which I think will help me to whittle my thesis down a little bit more.  So, look for some upcoming blog posts on metaphysics and the concept of infinite proximity.  Thanks for all your help so far, guys!    

To tell the laity of our love

Thanks to everyone that has been commenting!  All of your great points are really, REALLY helping me to formulate a solid idea of what I want to write about.  Something I'd like to address more comprehensively is Donne's stanza that says, 


"Dull sublunary lovers' love  
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     
    The thing which elemented it."

My original thought was that our relationships are "sublunary" like this now, because thanks to social media, absence has been all but eliminated.  But now I realize that that was so, so wrong.  Because absence has been removed from the equation (cell phones, email, skype, etc.) and because social networking has taken off so significantly, none (okay, few) of our relationships are "elemented" by physical closeness anymore.  This study that I referred to in my last post says that people have smaller social circles than they have in the past.  Is this because they have such strong and meaningful relationships that they don't need as many people in their personal networks?  Relationships that are based upon physical proximity and convenience aren't really necessary anymore.  

I've found several other studies that say people are able to form better relationships online because of the sense of anonymity.  They can create their own identity.  Ideally, they'll just be truer to what they perceive their  real-life identity to be.  Because of this, they can trust the person with whom they're forming a relationship more.  They can rely on each other more and share more information, because the internet seems so nonthreatening.  I think that is a very metaphysical idea. 

On my last post, my friend Heather commented and made a wonderful connection.  She said "isn't it interesting that a poet who was known for his somewhat paradoxical metaphors has BECOME a metaphor in the new media debate...Donne expressed the human tendency to make creative comparisons. Now, we, as humans, are capable of LIVING these comparisons as we form strong relationships over a distance. It's a paradox... but we do it, and it works." 

I love this point, and I think this is definitely where I want to end up with my paper.  Because of social media, we are able to embody metaphysical relationship ideals that Donne could only write about.  But, of course, new media also has detrimental effects.  My friend Neal made a comment that maybe we're sacrificing older relationship ideals for new ones-like the couple that's constantly texting.  There's the complaint that we as a society are too "plugged-in" and it's effecting our sense of reality.  So, am I making too bold of an assertion? 

  

Real love=Virtual love?

"Our problems with social media seem to derive from the fact that we’re inappropriately treating in-person and virtual communication as entirely different things."

So, my friend James brought up a really great point about long distance relationships in a comment on my last post, which was basically that online communication is only different from face-to-face communication because the older generation assumes so.  This article that he shared cites a recent study that found that "new information and communication technologies such as the internet and mobile phone" have not exacerbated social isolation in our society.  In fact, they discovered "the opposite trend amongst internet and mobile phone users; they have larger and more diverse core networks."


I think that we all know that social networking tools make it easier to keep in touch, but many also assume that these tools can never replace older forms of communication.  You know, this isn't necessarily true.  In the past twenty years, we have found excellent alternatives to letter-writing, traveling, blind-dating, rioting (see Audrey's blog)and isolated researching. Of course nothing will ever be able to take the place of real, face-to-face contact, but technology helps.


I also think it's interesting that, like this article says, social networking makes it easier for us to form relationships.  The study found that people as a whole have notably less people in their social circle than they did in the past.  New media is a reaction to this, not its cause.  


Now-how this ties into my thesis.  New media tools are a manifestation of the metaphysical desire to be constantly and profoundly interconnected, as proved by that study.  This doesn't mean that our relationships are less meaningful, though.  Do you think that even though Donne's metaphors have been actualized, people are still capable of romantic feelings that are equally as strong? What evidence is there of this?  


    

Ambient Awareness

Another thing that I think will be interesting to address with regard to my paper is ambient awareness. A really great article Ben tipped me off to explains this phenomenon really well. You can read it here.  One of the parts that jumped out me to the most says, 

" The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call."

To me, this sounds kind of like the metaphysical, lovey-dovey stuff Donne talks about, especially when he says, 

"Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion, 

Like gold to aery thinness beat"

I think that the ability lovers have in today's society to be not just emotionally and metaphorically but literally connected to their partner through text messages and other communication tools is an exemplification of Donne's metaphysical ideal of what a long-distance relationship should be.  

"It’s sort of like when you’re sitting with someone and you look over and they smile at you. You’re sitting here reading the paper, and you’re doing your side-by-side thing, and you just sort of let people know you’re aware of them.”