When you mail someone
a letter, the post office does not notify you when the addressee receives it.
When you leave someone a voicemail message, your phone does not beep to inform
you when the person called has listened to your message. So why do Facebook,
more and more email servers and iPhone text messages feel the need to notify
you with the day and time the receiver opens your message?
We live in a world
where we’re provided with too much information. Knowing when someone receives
something does not help us any more than it does hurt us. It’s not even
overinforming- it’s stalking when you’re following someone’s every click within
their personal communication with others. Having this technology is like
putting a recording bug on every human being and turning us into machines
instead of real people, who have real commitments in their real time.
What decisions do
these read scripts help us make? With confirmation that the other party has
seen something, we don’t know if they have actually read the entire message.
People can glance at text but not ever digest it until they are more focused.
Part of the power of email and text messages as a medium is the time you have
to craft a good response, so expecting immediacy is no good. You might as well
have called them and asked their opinion in that moment if you’re going to text/email,
then expect a quick reply. Therefore, if you want to live and make
well-informed decisions, don’t rely on the “read” message at the end of an
iPhone text or email. Respect the person you’re communicating with to respond
on their own time—the power you gave them by writing to them instead of
calling—and adequately answer what you needed.
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