Social Tangibility
Definition
One's social tangibility is directly related to the device through which they are available the most, or rather the space in which they are most likely to absorb communication. If one answers a landline telephone one hundred percent of the time, or listened to the answering machine every time a call is missed, and if that telephone was the first communication object one grabs to get in touch with the majority of their connections, then the telephone would be considered that person's home base of communication- or the device through which their virtual self was most available. A person has a different relative tangibility on each of the electronic devices they own, as well as a relative communication accessibility. One's persona may be more highly developed in some spaces than others, meaning that their social tangibility may be very high on XBox but very low on Twitter. In Serial Experiment's Lain, Lain's social tangibility was much higher in the Wired than it was in real life, making her online experience a Hypersigil. This lead to the unique premise of the show, that the digital world could affect the real world.
One's tangibility on a social service is directly related to their rate of information absorption and participation on that network. One's tangibility might be stronger on Twitter vs. Flickr. One might make more local connections through Facebook and more global connections through Flickr. In that case, one's global tangibility would be higher on Flickr and one's local tangibility higher on Twitter.
Conflicts or missed communication may occur when one's relative tangibility is higher in one space than another. A Facebook post illustrates this concept; "Ha, yeah Charlie checks his Facebook once in a blue moon - he's far more tangible by SMS".
