“You have my constant partial attention”, I posted in a comment as I glanced at my buddy list to see who was IMing me. In the lower right hand corner of the screen, little boxes appeared and disappeared as friends updated their statuses on Facebook. My phone chirped with text messages sent from friends on Twitter.

Neil Diamond’s ”IM, I said, to no one there, and no one heard at all” rang through my head. Yes, it does sometimes seem like this constant partial attention is nothing but IMing to nobody. Maybe this disquieting existence somewhere between being in constant contact with more people than ever was possible before and yet not really connecting with other people is all the more poignant to me right now as I sit in a place of unknowing about where I will live, what work I will do, and how I will manage to feed my family.

Perhaps this longing for real connections is why I am seeing so many people talking about how happy they are to be at YearlyKos in their Facebook statuses and their messages on Twitter. There are people at YearlyKos that have become close friends whom I have never met and whom I would have loved to meet face to face in Chicago.

Yes, this place of unknowing is uncomfortable, both in terms of what is going on personally, as well as what is going on with our online relationships. However, this place of unknowing is also where we can learn important things about ourselves and our relationships to people around us.

Too often, I’ve only glanced at the low priority emails, the IMs, the statuses updates, the Twitter messages and the blog posts that don’t catch my attention and let them pass me by without taking time to think about the underlying message that unifies all of them. Too often I haven’t listened to the collected digital unconscious or tried to view the digital palimpsest that all these messages build up.

As I got ready to leave for Boston this afternoon, I tried to whittle down the hundreds of unread emails to a more manageable size. Some messages I just deleted after glancing at the subject lines. Others I moved to folders that I’ll check again if the need ever arises, but they will most likely remain unread. Some received a little red flag to remind me to check the message again when I have more time.

Now, I’m on the train. I sent a message on my cell to Twitter and Facebook, which will get replicated via RSS to my blog and to Jaiku letting anyone who is paying constant partial attention to me that I am on my way to Boston.

The accumulated messages fade into the distance, like the evening lit swamps by the side of the railroad tracks. The swamps are lonely, empty, forsaken places that also contain great beauty if you look closely enough. As the train passes, I see beautiful birds take flight.

The success of a child using the potty for the first time is an important milestone and the mommy who is spending all her time talking with young children needs some friendly adult ears that can share the joy. They make for important blog posts. The remembrance of a special day with a loved one who lost the battle with cancer a few years ago is sacred and needs to be revered by all that pass by online.

In college, I read Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” and often think about how we treat the people around us as things. We relate to them as ‘its’ instead of ‘thous’. In these days of IMs and constant partial attention, it seems even easier to relate to those around us as ‘its’, as objects no different than bots that have passed their Turing test.

Can we learn to listen to the collective digital unconscious? Can we learn to connect with the sacred in those around us online? I believe we can, if we work on it. In doing so, our own writing will gain new meaning, our political advocacy will gain new depth. Please join me in seeking the “IM and Thou”.