Social Inference Through Technology

Abstract

Awareness cues are computer-mediated, real-time indicators of people's undertakings, whereabouts, and intentions. Already in the mid-1970 s, UNIX users could use commands such as ``finger'' and ``talk'' to find out who was online and to chat. The small icons in instant messaging (IM) applications that indicate coconversants' presence in the discussion space are the successors of ``finger'' output. Similar indicators can be found in online communities, media-sharing services, Internet relay chat (IRC), and location-based messaging applications. But presence and availability indicators are only the tip of the iceberg. Technological progress has enabled richer, more accurate, and more intimate indicators. For example, there are mobile services that allow friends to query and follow each other's locations. Remote monitoring systems developed for health care allow relatives and doctors to assess the wellbeing of homebound patients (see, e.g., Tang and Venables 2000). But users also utilize cues that have not been deliberately designed for this purpose. For example, online gamers pay attention to other characters' behavior to infer what the other players are like ``in real life.'' There is a common denominator underlying these examples: shared activities rely on the technology's representation of the remote person. The other human being is not physically present but present only through a narrow technological channel.