IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 43

time, and some of them are going
to require more time than others.
That said, within the limitations of
the basic brain hardware to process
information people can do lots and
lots of things given enough time,
and, in particular, asynchronous
and synchronous processes can be
better integrated than in a "single
consciousness" model. If we are
dealing with presence and a locale,
if we are actually talking on the
phone, if we are carrying on two
or three or five different text conversations at the same time, some
may warrant more investment at
a given time, but asynchronously
an arbitrary number of different
bits of attention can in principle be
accommodated.
Unfortunately neither the single holistic consciousness model
nor the time-slicing consciousness model has been established
conclusively. A single holistic
consciousness would appear to
have less capacity to exceed basic
physiological and psychological
limits. Adaptive strategies will
tend towards offloading the excess
required processing to distributed,
socially distributed organizations
of people and activities. This will
require a lot of time and coordination to emerge as an adaptive pattern that is accessible and useful
to most individuals. Adaptation
under the time-slicing consciousness will also ultimately require
the same distributed social solution to adapt optimally, but is much
easier to extend by an individual
given enough time and enough of
the new activity being achievable
in an asynchronous manner.
In looking at mobile cell phone
use, perhaps part of the problem
is that although a phone conversation is synchronous, this too is
becoming a part of an overall digital world view that is increasingly
asynchronous. Although everyone
is generally capable of handling
similar tasks, the transformation
of the basic approach to communications from being dominantly

synchronous to largely asynchronous, using email, texting and
sedimentary interfaces such as
Facebook and Twitter that slowly
accumulate and lose information,
may imply different skill sets for
different demographics in a community, and much more across different communities.

Asynchronicity
If we carry the discussion of asynchronicity further, we may find
that while our argument at first put
asynchronicity as an adaptation to
life on-the-go; a way for people to
manage the heterogenous onslaught
of multiple messages coming to
them from multiple sources (e.g.,
the facebook problem) combined
with forced compliance, time compression and other reasons that they
must go online in multiple ways at
multiple times, it may be that asynchronicity is the motivation for the
popularity and distribution for the
technology. People seem to be using
cell phones, but do not seem to be
well suited to using them. Despite
that, the use of cell phones and
mobile data devices is growing at a
rapid rate [34]. Asynchronous messaging has other advantages besides
time compression. Text rates have
surpassed or hit parity with voice for
teen users, the prototype group for
adaptive technology [35]. Younger
people seem to adapt well to mobile
tech, but less so to grounded reality.
The ability to time shift, to deal
with email or messages or voice
calls or texts when one wants to,
and not at the beck and call of others can be seductive. we saw this
with the beginning of answering machines with landlines, now
nearly all forms of communication
using cell phones or mobile devices
could selectively be asynchronous.
At the moment, we are observing
a pattern going towards asynchronous messaging gaining popularity. Yet, the ways that people are
asynchronous are similar, but differ
wildly depending up on what type
of apps they are using at any given

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

wINTEr 2013

time and what the tools are within
those apps that allow privacy.
Geospatial type apps like Foursquare or Facebook, shows others
via a "chat" whether or not one is
logged in. For messaging, people
have always had the opportunity to
respond in their own time, but with
some forms, like texting, an immediate response is expected. we are
curious to learn whether people use
asynchronous messaging to maintain Dunbar like extended ties [31],
and use synchronous messaging for
updating close relationships.

Layers of Complexity
PolySocial reality contains the
space of these messages, but as
an analytic model focused only on
messaging interaction, it does not
represent them completely. It represents the idea that they exist, in
different forms and combinations,
and gives us a way to understand,
at a reduced level that things are a)
complex; b) rapidly compounding,
and thus; c) becoming even more
complex. The more people are
managing ties between asynchronous and synchronous messaging
and the more messages may or may
not overlap and may or may not
get completed, the more messages
may be sent. This adds another
layer of complexity-not to mention the replies and updates that
are automatically generated by the
apps themselves. This is what creates connected individuation and
networked individualism-each
person manages messages, communicates, and responds in their
own way, in their own time. Communities are built on the foundation of cooperative behavior-a
result of cooperative communication with some homogenous commonalities. we are connected, but
through a rapidly diverging complex of possible heterogenous ways
and combinations of adapting.

Author Information
The authors are with the University of
Kent, Canterbury, Centre for Social
|

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013