Hyperties

“A new form of hyperlink is emerging, the ‘hypertie,’ which bridges the gap between links created in computational media and those authored in the physical world when people interact with one another and the objects around them. The hypertie is an innovation in the interaction order, the result of the merger of existing social practices of association with the technical affordances of mobile networked information systems and the existing hyperlink infrastructure. A new era in social life is arriving when the ties that bind people can be inscribed with decreasing effort into forms similar to the ways hyperlinks create connections between resources on the Internet and World Wide Web. New mobile devices represent a novel innovation in an otherwise slow-to-change realm of social interaction—face-to-face encounters. The result is a shift from a social world in which much is ephemeral to one in which even the most trivial of passings is archival.”

E na conclusão do artigo:

“Making objects into ‘favorites,’ adding someone to a watch list, and similar features allow people to browse content as before but now leave a series of traces behind that are visible to others. As a result, writing is easier than ever: we are all writers now, if only because reading is now writing. Few systems allow for the unnoticed and unreflected consumption of content. Such behavior is valuable, socially and practically interesting, and cheap to collect. In such a situation, privacy issues are sharpened. The walls have ears and eyes, and others’ eyes and ears are now high-fidelity and archival.”