Texting Means Never Having to Say Goodbye
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On the other hand, email or forum threads don't have good-byes either, and neither did many IRC chatrooms.
IM used to be akin to a telephone conversation, now it's more like email chain. This is necessary, because we don't have short windows that we dedicate to being online anymore (during which the expectations are higher). If we treated all incoming messages as telephone calls, that'd take all our time. The result is that IM has a priority just above an email, but below everything else (phones calls, offline things happening, etc).
You could similarly ask how can people get any work done if they can also watch youtube videos all day?
These days people do have to have self control, because all kinds of entertainment is just a click away, so people have to consciously set aside those to get things done.
Oh definitely. I mean It's not that people don't have self control. The problem is exactly that: we have to constantly vigilantly exercise it. I think technology shouldn't make you constantly exercise self control or anything else. I mean, not unless you want to.
Always having access to all kinds of online content makes you constantly exercise your self control by itself.
Oh I think I understand now: yes, exactly, and that can be pretty tough. I don't understand why everything needs to demand your self control. Specifically, why do these technologies that purportedly help us actually force us to discipline ourselves? I think that should be our first clue that these technologies aren't actually doing what technology is for, which is helping us, making us better, increasing our various capabilities. Instead many of these technologies quite literally have the opposite effect. But I love technology and believe in technology in principle, so I created an email platform that, unlike basically everything else, does not make you exercise self control and actually works to improve you.
If you haven't done that in the past 2 years, consider the fact that you either:
- Never had the problem this is trying to solve, in which case you should consider responding to this like a lactose-intolerant responds to a lasagna restaurant: its not for you.
- Found a solution to this problem that you've learned to exercise so effortlessly that you forgot it was a hard problem, in which case you should please share it.
I think these two things together could cover most of my personal communication needs, though it for work communications I'd still need faster-than-daily email.
> though it for work communications I'd still need faster-than-daily email.
This is the most requested feature. Will definitely head in this direction.
First, thanks for making the platform. I find it interesting, because it mirrors how I use email with an email client, especially when traveling: retrieve messages - write responses later - send them whenever.
To that end, I have two considerations:
1)The defining features of your service (daily collection / sending) are easily client-side. I can already configure my desktop email client to behave like pony.gg with a couple of clicks.
So it would make a lot of sense, I think, for you to release an email app. Yes, there are many email apps, but for people who can't resist setting email retrieval interval to <5minutes, less is more.
Then the users will be able to keep their @bigcorp.com / @work.org address, while having the full benefit of your service.
2)On the other hand, you can also enforce these features server-side, allowing people to use their favorite IMAP clients. Just allow, say, one 1hr window in a 24hr time span for retrieval, and the same for sending (so people in different timezones can all get their email at 7am, but won't be able to get new messages after getting their email for the first time that day; same with sending).
Are there any plans to have 3rd part email client support?
Thank you so much.
1) This is on the way. For a first version, this webapp actually wraps nicely in Cordova, and I intend to publish it in the App/Play stores. Alternatively, you will be able to install it as a PWA. Either way, you will be able to compose offline. I think it would also work well in Electron.
2) This is a bit tricky because Pony is more "email compatible" than it is email. Concretely, (i) Each message can only have one recipient. (ii) There is no subject line (iii) You send things by putting them in the Outbox and letting time pass. I've given it some thought and I think there are ways to smooth all this over and adapt it to IMAP, but I think the result might be clumsy.
And there are "philosophical" considerations as well. Pony provides you with a non-instant space to communicate that is separate from the instant everything else. I think combining these two spaces would possibly take something away from the Pony experience?
> The defining features of your service (daily collection / sending)
By the way, while that is a feature, I don't think it's the defining feature. I think the defining feature is providing a space where people can correspond reflectively instead of reactively. When you've got an email client configured some way, you can always unconfigure it. With Pony, there is no way to make it non-instant. So unless you are rushing to make a pickup, there is reason you'd be rushing to hit send when you compose a message, or worried more messages might come and distract you. There are other apps that batch your email, but there are no apps that give you space and freedom to think like Pony.
Next gen. communication tools like fb messenger, WhatsApp etc. solved this problem by making the default expectation asynchronous. It was a huge step in evolution of messaging.
Why? Were there no chat history in those tools?
Couldn't you just sign off if you had other things to do, and answer later in the same conversation?
That was around the good old times when we argued whether utf-8 posts are acceptable, whether top-posters deserve life sentences, and other very important things...
I guess turning off online status completely is the way to go. Maybe it should be off by default. What's the point of showing it if the person can answer anyway when he has the time?
But in another sense, they weren't, as I would often elect to set my status across my services as Away in order to curb the expectations of some people who were particularly in need of attention.
I guess that part hasn't changed, though. Just today I had to explicitly set boundaries with someone about how often they can realistically expect to command my attention away from my task at hand and toward my phone.
Sort of, but back then the expectations were different. It would have been uncommon, and sometimes impolite, to come back to a conversation several hours or minutes later as if there was no official end.
Feels weird now but having lived in the original chat room era, in which our parents' phone calls interrupted our internet connection, it was pretty different back then.
Now everyone is always available on their phone, but also not truly available at any time. Presence indicators don't mean much any more because people may be online just to view Facebook, or on their phone only momentarily.
I think another contributing factor to the decline in quality of IM conversations is the use of phone keyboards. They are so much worse to type on than a real keyboard that I believe it changes the nature and quality of conversations people have considerably, for the worse.
That's why async is great, because people can answer whenever they like.
> when they were they would be attentive enough to have a real-time, fulfilling conversation
For this kind of conversation IM is not a good medium. In case of a real time, attentive convesation a phone call is much better, isn't it?
>IM is not a good medium
It certainly was a good medium - I had lots of great conversations on old IM services and so did countless others. See this related thread from the other day [1]
You could talk to many people at the same time, unlike a phone call. You could more easily do it at the same time as your homework, watching a film, or doing something else on the internet.
Any time you completely change a fundamental understanding of how something is done - especially something as critically foundational as communication - you end up having to build new rules quickly, or risk destroying either that foundation or trust in the new protocol.
I am not so sure about that. I remember conversation from my 3310 and it was way shorter blip of words. I love word drawing, it speeds up my writing by a 5x factor (or 3x or 10x, don't know).
The thing is you never really know if the other party is up for long sentences because you can't tell if he's behind a computer keyboard or a phone (or god forbids, a tablet). It usually means "I am on the phone, talk to you later")
Really? I could imagine some (or maybe even most) people are faster on a smartphone, but for me it's "obviously" worse.
I'm tremendously slower on iOS/Android on-screen keyboards than I was with T9. I could text really fast using T9 on a hard keypad without even looking down at the screen, despite only really using it heavily for a year or two. Then I got a Blackberry Curve, a kind-of-but-not-really-smartphone with a full hard QWERTY keyboard -- there I was similarly fast.
Then came the iPhone and screen-only Android phones and I got much slower and less precise, and touch-typing is a total crapshoot. Despite having used them for almost 10 years now, I don't think I've ever recovered to anywhere near the speed I had with even a T9 keypad.
I think the key difference is a hard keyboard (or even 10 digit keypad). I'm not saying smartphones aren't enough of an improvement in other ways (obviously, since I've chosen them over dumbphones for a decade), but I really miss the haptic feedback of actual keys.
It seems the parent has luck with word drawing, but I remember looking into alternative keyboards a couple years ago and not being impressed. The most enjoyable and fastest writing I've done on a mobile device is with 10-key Japanese input[0]. Unfortunately I do not regularly talk to anyone in Japanese.
[0]: Couldn't find a good article or webpage on this. You can hopefully grasp the core concept from http://miku.sega.jp/flick/en/. Since Japanese phonetics all end in -a, -e, -i, -o, -u with the exception of ん ~ n, the flick directions are symmetric. Coupled with how more than decent Japanese IME is and a few extra keys to navigate the suggestions, modifiers and other common input (brackets, commas, etc. operated by the same flick motions) you can get very fast and precise. I don't get to use it often, but it's a joy when I do. They even made a game out of it :)
If I am at a place by myself then I just talk, using speech to text. Speech recognition is pretty good these days, I usually only have to fix small things in the resulting text (names, etc.), and it's much faster than typing a longer message.
Presence indicators combined with status messages (e.g “walking the dog”) were the original inspiration behind Jack Dorsey’s conception of Twitter.
I believe mobility and the smartphone made it asynchronous because every knew you could be answering on your phone but not be with your phone in your hand all the time whereas old school messaging app expected you to be sat down in front of a computer and it usually meant you'd be available for some time.
Concerning invisibility I always thought it was a cool factor: "I am not here, don't need to be" combined with "I am not wasting time on messenger" and a lurking/stalking thing.
Side note though, my favorite part of this article, ironically, is the part in the first paragraph which she illustrates as something young people will dismiss: That Salt Lake City has the longest city blocks in the nation. I have lived here my whole life and have always known we have mega huge blocks, but wasn't aware they were the biggest in the nation, and it appears they could be the biggest in the world. This has interesting implications[0] and as someone very interested in urban planning I was taken aback by this and thought it funny that she used it as an example of something people find dismissable.
[0] https://www.governing.com/columns/urban-notebook/gov-salt-la...
Now, the issue seems to have resolved itself thanks to the emoji. Whether it's a Slack or a text, the appearance of a thumbs up emoji is a friendly, succinct way to say "we're done now."
It comes from `À plus` which roughly translate to `See you later` but uses plus sign because of the sound.
It's even funnier because you used to write a single `+` then the other party replied with `++` but that usage has fallen and I only see the double plus sign these days.
Was the same command to take an AT compatible modem from data mode to command mode and cause it to disconnect. Are you sure that’s not where it originated?
There could be a tiny chance that it comes from something else but that's highly unlikely.
If you're standing next to someone and they ignore your attempts at getting their attention, how long should you continue before finding something better to do?
I hate synchronous online communication. Just ask the question, and I'll respond some hours later when I have time. If you want synchronous, schedule me in person.
Some questions are time relevant. I need an answer before x, unless y, if z. I don't want to write all the caveats every unnecessary time. Then how long do I sit around in case you certainly, maybe, probably, possibly got it?
Since texts and earliest days of ICQ just about everyone I know opens with ping, answer with ack or nack / silence. Super easy to decide whether to even ask... :)
"Hey got a minute?" => no
"Hey got a minute for A?" => yes
"Hey got a minute for B?" => no
If they just tell me what they want, I can decide when to answer the question and whether it requires me to do research or go into a long explanation.
Traditional call-center metrics were tough to apply though CSAT improvements were dramatic and almost instantaneous. Despite the lack of features compared to web chat, people really responded to SMS. I'm sure that was due to convenience (people are in their SMS/messaging client anyway) and that our customers staffed the lines with real people, rather than bots.