That describes the online conversations of so many Twitterers.  Conversations happen over time.  It might sometimes be days before you respond or reply to a tweet to you.  You don’t even think anything about it when you don’t get a reply.  Sometimes you might be surprised to get one immediately.  It’s the way things are going.

This isn’t a new idea.

What this does though is it conditions us to have the same kinds of conversations off line – in the real world – face to face.  What we do shapes us.  If you start having Asynchronous and Absent conversations on Twitter, you’ll start having them in real life.  We lose our sense of presence when our real life conversation is Asynchronous and Absent.  Have you ever been in the same room with someone and texted or tweeted them?  Our conversations on Twitter are like this, and soon our conversations face to face will be like this.  It’ll be face to screen.  It might work for you.