The Oddity of the IM
Postal letters are a pretty recent invention in the grand scheme of human's evolutionary history. The world's oldest postal service was established ~4,400 years ago, and back then it was only for kings and nobles. If you were a commoner back then, and you wanted to be in touch, you had to either talk in person, or just not at all.
It's interesting to think about this in the time of quarantine, when most communication becomes written, and face-time becomes exception to the norm.
The instant messaging features in the past few years have largely been try to make texting seem more in-person:
- The emojis act as substitutes for tone and facial expression.
- The typing indicators prevents people from talking over one another. * The various “like” buttons imitate facial expressions
- The “sent” and “seen” indicators solve the uncertain receipt problem.
But try as the IM apps may, they can't solve the cultural problem of vague norms around communications. When someone sends an instant message, did they intend to start a real time conversation, or did they intend it more like a memo? Is it rude to not respond to a message if it doesn't lend itself to a response, or would it be overzealous to try to respond to everything?
Unlike in-person-conversations where the norm is straightforward, in the world of IM, each person has their own rules. I think this causes a lot of confusion for a lot of people. What's interesting too is that there's no simple model that stands out as being the best, and regardless of that, since there is often a lack of direct feedback in these messages, it's unlikely for the IM norms to ever converge...
Is there a good personal or systematic solution to this? I wonder.
— Categorized under: #sociology, #psychology, #communications