Smarter Than You Think

Ambient awareness is a term dubbed by social scientists to describe a new form of peripheral social awareness (Wikipedia, 2015). This awareness comes from constant contact with people via social networking platforms like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Blogger, etc. We see this term being a big part of Clive Thompsons book Smarter Than You Think and is an essential element to understanding technology today. According to Thompson, ambient awareness is “almost like being in the same room as someone and picking up on his/her mood and thoughts by the stray signals he/she gives off” (Thompson, 2013). He continues to say that ambient awareness is like a type of E.S.P. where “you create a picture of someone else’s internal state gradually, actually unconsciously,
Sharing our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, gives others the sense of knowing you on a personal level and essentially creating a digital friendship with you. Thompson believes that this results in meaningful positive changes in how we interact with each other. This interaction can occur online and Thompson explains that when cruising his newsfeed, “it’s his (my) personal interest in his (my) friends that makes their newsfeeds meaningful. If you were to glance at the people he (I) follows you would just see disjointed info” (Thompson, 2013). Each individual is different and the more exposure to another person through these constant updates, can increase this sense of “social proprioception”. Basically, it’s the impact that status updating is having in your life and implements this perception that what they are saying is somehow crucial. Social proprioception is one of the numerous outcomes of ambient awareness and is a powerful thing. It is all about slowly amassing an enormous, detailed context for others through these online settings, which has a large potential value for “real life”