Brain Dump

This is a sort-of follow up to my previous post on forums and addictive behavior. It turns out that most forms of computer-mediated communication encourage addictive behaviors to some degree or another (forums are just some of the worst offenders).

I think there’s a pretty simple reason for this actually. Computer-mediate communication does not benefit from traditional conversation-space boundaries, and most uses of said mediums have not evolved good substitutes.

When I talk about conversation-space boundaries, what I mean is the ways that you know that a conversation is taking place and when it is not. With phone conversations you know the conversation is ‘on’ when you answer the phone, and ‘off’ when you hang up. In physical conversations there are all sorts of non-verbal cues in addition to simple space: when someone leaves to go home, you’re done talking to them.

This is not the case in CMC conversations. I can’t tell if you are actively reading and/or writing a response or not. Should I stay up another fifteen minutes to find out, or should I just go to sleep?

This problem is at the intersection of the lack of conversation-space boundaries and the push for synchronous communication. If we thought of email as snail-mail, then this problem wouldn’t arise. The expected time between replies would be long enough that a day or two’s delay would likely not matter. But with instant communication comes the pressure to communicate instantly. (I should note this phrase somewhere, it is clever.)

Anyway, I’m just now beginning to think about this and possible solutions. My guess is that they’ll end up being social rather than technical (simple notes to say ‘I’ll get to this tomorrow’ or some-such), though I believe a technical solution might make a social one easier/more intuitive. We shall see, I suppose.

Thomas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 05:28 and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.