A Thought on Communication | Hacker News Reader

A Thought on Communication

al3x.net

Most people I know prefer texting to talking on the phone. It's easier to multitask or defer your response. Video communication is even more invasive than audio. I seriously doubt that communicating with your peers by text is now considered archaic will hold true (at least compared to video).

I certainly hope not, for exactly the reasons you post.

But I know the world doesn't give a hoot about what I want and that ignoring the future is very, very dangerous.

I prefer too and that could be because I don't want to bother the other one, when I only have a short message I just want them to get notified about. I don't want an immidiate answer or hear their feelings etc.. I just need an answer in the near future.

And because text gives me the possibility to get my thoughts ready into consumable form too, there's no question why we use it more often.

But these things point to the differences of real-time/delayed messages, like email or chat and both have their places.

It grieves me when someone texts me and says "do you want to do lunch?" and I text them back saying "sure, where and when?"... and then I end up having to pick the time and place, and usually the first three or so suggestions get knocked back.

I mean, if it was a woman, I would understand, but when a bloke does that to me I'm always thinking to myself "Dude, take off the lipstick and put on some trousers for goodness sake".

Texting should be a more efficient means of communication, but alas, is still imperfect. :D

I've read a book by Niel Postman where he points out that the medium your working in changes how you craft a message. I believe he was right in stating that a text-based medium promotes reasoning to a greater degree.

The same sort of idea is present in the receiving of a message as well. Your input is going to be processed differently based on the medium your in. Think of ebooks versus paper based books. When you use ebooks you have a better searching and storing experience, but paper based books have an edge when taking notes.

What I'm trying to get across here is that switching from one medium to another doesn't mean were going to be put at an advantage or disadvantage necessarily. We could be putting everyone at a disadvantage by switching to a medium that isn't as good, which means those of us who weren't using the new medium from birth are at advantage over those of us who were.

To make this point in another way, imagine Hacker News in a futuristic video world. Note that now that your dealing with video you have new biases being put in. For example, you might not be able to hear all the comments at the same time or the pretty girl is being upvoted despite a not so compelling content contribution. It becomes a pretty different site. So different that I would say, "I'm glad I got to have the text-based Hacker News" instead of "I think those of us who aren't use to video comments are at a disadvantage."

I think Marshall McLuhan's views on this are worth revisiting as well, though he's currently a bit out of favor among media-studies and communications-studies folks. He's admittedly a bit extreme in parts (he seems to sometimes really believe that the "medium is the message"), but there's a lot of good stuff in Laws of Media on how different technical choices for representing and conveying information will structure and influence the information that's conveyed, as opposed to being mere implementation details.

We've already shown that remote and non-present communication works, but the difference between delayed and instant communication is huge. It's not so much text vs. video but that text gives you the ability to think and write/rewrite, while audio or video forces you to be real-time. IM, text, email, letters, and comments have more in common with each other than the issues of presence or remoteness, as do telephony and video.

Text-based communication won't disappear. Video may replace audio-only, but they're intrinsically different and each has their advantages and purposes. The medium or means may change, but we'll always have a delayed and an instant method of communication.

Regarding "the inevitable future": why the heck would we bother? The post itself gives precisely the reason that this won't happen:

> This world of pervasive video necessitates beauty. It values physical poise, wardrobe, and the tenor of one’s voice.

I can answer the phone in my underwear. I can't video-call someone in my underwear. That's a reason to avoid video-calling, not a reason to get dressed.

The kinds of new technologies that see instant adoption are the kinds that make ordinary life easier and more comfortable. Video calling is harder and more formal than voice-calling (which is itself harder and more formal than textual communication.) It won't get used in the majority of situations, where the informational content just needs to be efficiently pushed to another person with as little personal effort expended as possible.

The one use it will have is in status signaling, in situations where one needs to show they really care and are expending a lot of energy on the call (calling your wife, calling your grandparents, doing a phone job interview in a suit.)

I can answer the phone in my underwear. I can't video-call someone in my underwear. That's a reason to avoid video-calling, not a reason to get dressed.

Under current standards in the current time, I agree. But from a historical perspective, it's likely that standards will change over the long-term, as they did for, say, women's beachwear or corporate dress.

If we reach a time when almost everyone is working from home in their PJs, we should also wind towards such dress being accepted in semi-formal contexts. Consider jeans in the workplace now. Even 30 years ago, a CEO wearing jeans at a board meeting couldn't be taken seriously whereas now it's almost a cliché in tech firms (compare early 80s and 2010 Steve Jobs). The dress of the typical tech CEO now would probably induce fainting or rage in the board members of the typical pre-1960s corporation..

If working remotely and video calling become that pervasive, I have no doubt that various filters on your appearance will become commonplace. You could answer a call in your pjs and appear to be in a suit for a business call, or in jeans and a t-shirt for your friends, etc.

Of course until it is harder and more formal nobody will use it. But the writer doesn't really imagine how or why could be video superior to text and audio. I am talking about the feelings that are missunderstood or the joy of the shared (virtual) place. There is AR, there is auto-tune, there is WOW, there is no need to get your pants when you can have a virtual avatar that mimics your feelings and movement.

There are many possibilites why could be video better when we want to hang out.. Think of kinect when they play together etc.

This will never exchange good old sms/email (delayed communication) when you just need an answer but don't really feel to talk, but there could be a place for it.

There isn't much room for half-commitment while on a video call and the interpersonal aspects of the job come to the front. This changes the way one works.

But it isn't quite that novel. Face-to-face interaction we have in the real world can be viewed as high-quality "video communications". Technology is merely making it affordable to do the same at a distance and without losing much of the quality.

So, most of the old etiquette simply migrates to the new medium. For example, if you don't go to work in pyjamas you probably won't take a video call at home while in your pyjamas either.

I find it novel that the stereotype of the person who will benefit least from this transition is also the stereotype of the person who will comment on HN.

Hm, this might explain something. In old B&W videos people's impromptu speech seems much more eloquent than today. I wonder if the luxury of instant text communication has something to do with it.

Video communication would also solve the biggest issue with tablet computers: text production is just too cumbersome.

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