On (Absent) Presence

Fabio Sergio looks at the concept of presence. I'll take this one step further and say that mobile and ubiquitous technologies afford an *absent* presence.

Not unlike the experience of "phantom" limbs - technologies that can go anywhere and be everywhere blur distinctions between distance and proximity, and effectively enable intimacy-at-a-distance. Sometimes, what is *present* is precisely that which is (also) *absent*.