When we watch TV, we have to synchronize our time with the time of all of the available channels so that we can tap into the stream of programming. When we find something we want to watch, we allow ourselves to be immersed in the flowing current that the program provides. Computers are nothing like TVs. All Web users have probably gone through that initial period of discovery where they surf from page to page and lose all sense of time as they become immersed in the experience. Flow happens when our actions and the reactions of the application hit the right balance of effort and reward, and time just disappears.
Telephones are radically different.
When we answer a ringing phone, we immediately collapse the distance between ourselves and the person we're talking to. We're extending ourselves to another person, yet our sense of time is unaffected. While flow and narrative immersion are useful tricks, they depend on our conscious effort to engage in an activity. The Web provides a framework for a different kind of information exchange, one that can be more like a telephone's effortless extension of talking over distance. A good convergence application of the Web should make the particular device disappear in the same way that the telephone fades away when we're using it so we can concentrate on the conversation.