I think I was born fifteen years too late to have an FTIC (Full-Time Intimate Community):
FTICs are the close group of friends (usually around 8-10 people) with whom you share presence. Most mobile youths know whether members of their FTIC are awake, at school, happy, sick, finished with their homework, etc. They use their mobile phones to keep in touch with their FTIC usually sending state changes by text message.
Joi Ito posted this, discussing something called Radar, which is supposed to let young people easily share photos as well as text with their FTIC. I guess these are the people Twitter is for.
I wonder whether my students have FTICs, or whether they’re too old as well? My ten-year-old doesn’t – well, not yet. She has MSN messenger (the pervasive IM in Norway) but it’s infrequently used. Her mobile phone is only dragged along when I insist. For now.
Hamdi
Looks like i am too old. *sigh…. I don’t want to be old. Other people are old.
Jill
My thoughts exactly!!
profgrrrrl
I’m not sure that I’d want a FTIC. It feels … nosy, maybe? There’s something to be said for privacy and not always being able to be found.
Yes, that means I’m old. But even my younger siblings don’t seem to be too into the FTIC thing. They leave their AIM on with a status message, but those tend to be vague or cue rather than truly informative.
Jill
Yes, I was wondering whether FTICs actually really exist, or whether they’re descriptions of rather rare activities – that well, might even be used as advertising for a feature people didn’t know they needed.
A Collage of Citations » up late, thinking about full-time intimate communities
[…] I just finished the next-to-last draft of the Writing Intensive Curriculum winter term newsletter, and I should be using this energetic up-late time to work on Sara and my CCCC talk for next week, but I just read a post at jill/txt that got me thinking. Quoting Joi Ito, she describes Full-Time Intimate Communities: FTICs are the close group of friends (usually around 8-10 people) with whom you share presence. Most mobile youths know whether members of their FTIC are awake, at school, happy, sick, finished with their homework, etc. They use their mobile phones to keep in touch with their FTIC usually sending state changes by text message. […]
cathy
I am most definitely too old for FTICs, and my 21 year old is also too old, I am glad to add – at least I belong to a group that includes 21 year olds – my teenagers however have FTICs, always there with Bebo, MSN, and SMS. Sometimes all at the same time, as well as the house phone, and even the front door… Yes, FTICs exist, and they have invaded my house.
Thomas
I had a strange feeling when I had uset Twitter for a while. On one hand I loved to be so in touch with my friends lives, and on the other hand I felt that it was a bit too intrusive How did everybody around me get so old, I’m not getting any older:-/).
When I was a kid my sisters spent hours on the phone with their friends, just keeping in touch, so I don’t think mobile phones and IM makes this FTIC new, just easier with the new tools.
torill
I call them family. When we’re all at different parts of the world, we connect to check what’s up, who’s where, did we arrive safely, who’s staying up late or who’s gettign up early. Not every change of state, but pretty closely connected.