Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Is having everything available in "real time" where we really want to go?

(1/6) > >>

40hz:
Hannah Donovan (cellist and former lead designer for Last.fm) has penned a very interesting essay over at the A List Apart website entitled: Everything in its Right Pace.

Some time ago I realized, with mild panic, that our always-on, real-time communication channels weren't going away. As I was gulping down the day's feeds along with my morning coffee, it occurred to me that even if I wanted to, I couldn't really opt out. My refresh twitch is so habitual now it's almost hard to remember just how experimental things like the early days of Twitter felt.

Of course it once was, like all new things. The real-time web started as something we did because we could. Technological advancements like more efficient ways to retrieve large amounts of data, the cloud, and the little computers we now carry around in our pockets made it just a really sexy problem to solve. Successful experiments turned into trends, and those trends are now becoming unquestioned convention.

But is real time always the right choice? Do we even want everything we consume to move at this pace?
--- End quote ---

Her design experience with web companies gave her a very interesting insight regarding talk (in this case webtalk on Twitter) which lead her to ask an even more interesting question - is the pace of talk the speed that we want all our experiences to be conducted at:

We're just embarking on an instrumented era of logging all our personal data and making it available instantly, yet diminishing returns have already started to set in. We struggle not only to keep up with each other's data trails, but more importantly, to know which crumbs in those trails are worth picking up, as well as how to find them again later—like when you want to relax on the sofa after a hectic week and you know there must have been a bunch of cool things to listen to or watch that flew by on Twitter, but gosh, where are they now?
.
.
.
I have a hunch that when we invent new things, the first way we test our new technology is with talk. Our ability to communicate is simply one of the most basic use cases in the design problem of our lives. And not only is it essential and important and the rest of it, it's fun. It makes us laugh. Why wouldn't we?

This real-time barrage of voices works well for talk, because talk is fast, easy, effortless. We do it constantly. So what about things that take longer to make and consume: a song, a book, a film? Trying to squeeze these types of media up into the high-frequency end of the spectrum and expecting that we'll enjoy them whizzing around our heads at the same speed as our daily chatter might create a missed opportunity to explore a whole other end to the spectrum of pace for personal data!
--- End quote ---

Excellent article. Check the rest of it out here.
 :Thmbsup:

Renegade:
It's funny how "can" and "should" often collide.

IainB:
Interesting post. My take on it is that most/many of us seem to be subject to a self-generated compulsion in the use of and the immediacy of use of some technologies.

The question in the subject is:
Is having everything available in "real time" where we really want to go?
--- End quote ---
It seems to beg the question of whether we actually know where we want to go in the first place.
For any newly-introduced technology, the answer to the latter is arguably usually "No". Indeed, how could it be otherwise? How could we know what the user requirements might be? We often have absolutely no idea at all.

So, what often gets delivered to the user is a product/service technology/design that exhibits certain features that the designers dream up/think/guess/anticipate that the users might find helpful/useful/enjoyable/titillating. The only way to find out for sure is a trial marketing exercise. Let the thing out in ß, for example. Feedback from the users will be useful as a guide for necessary design/development changes, and will also help to identify any bugs in the thing too, because you probably didn't/couldn't really test it rigorously enough anyway.

This is the classic product development approach, and various IT suppliers, including, for example, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have taken that approach with their products/services at one time or another. The result is usually either a product/service that continues, or one that is summarily despatched at an early stage in its life-cycle.
At the end of the day, the product/service needs to be able to turn a profit. The Amazon example is one where the life-cycle was allowed to continue for a greatly extended period, even though it apparently made a loss meanwhile. Now it makes a profit and has a commanding market presence.
This can happen because entrepreneurs usually have the freedom to exercise invention, innovation and risk-taking in a Capitalist economy. This leads to many startups and failures, with a few prominent successes - rather like the Manhattan skyline. It arguably couldn't happen in a Socialist-Communist planned command-economy, because it would go against the dominant socio-political ideology and laws.

Psychologists tell us that research shows humans to be not naturally long-term thinkers but short-term thinkers, and suppose this to be an evolutionary survival characteristic. There is a characteristic in human nature that manifests itself as a desire/need for short-term rewards - IG (Instant Gratification).
IG has long been researched by psychologists and since the '30s has usually been incorporated unsubtly into a company's product/service marketing strategies.
Some of the new technologies that are introduced and that meet the need for IG for some users in some manner are seized on by those users, and they hammer the thing to bits, seeking max and repetitive IG. They do that because the psychological reward for the behaviour that leads a user to obtaining IG is so great that it leads to the behaviour necessarily being repeated as often as needed and as quickly as possible, so as to repeat the reward experience.
For example, texting via cellphones: how many times have you witnessed people so completely absorbed in a cellphone text "conversation" that they seem oblivious to what is around them? They are engrossed in a rewarding process.

The same can be largely true for things such as, for example, drug addiction and substance abuse (e.g., cigarette-smoking), and illicit marital affairs.
Why? Well, you cannot stop doing these things unless you force yourself to practice behaviours that avoid doing them. If you keep doing them, then you keep receiving the reward for IG (usually stimulation of the pleasure centers) that you crave/need so badly and that past experience has taught you that you can obtain again by a repetition.

The oblivious cellphone texter is in the same/similar condition. If they were not gaining some form of IG/pleasure feedback from the exercise, then they would discontinue the behaviour (assuming there was no external compulsion to continue).
Another aspect that could come into play is fear.
Fear of perceived potential loss is a very strong driver.
For example, the cellphone texter may feel apprehension/fear at the thought of missing or not replying to what might be an "important" message. So keep glued to that little screen or be sorry.

We seem to be generally susceptible to a lot of technology that can put us in this sort of condition - IG pleasure, or pleasure-fear - including, for example, compulsively watching TV, or playing computer games, or reading an engrossing book, or reading newspapers, or reading the Sunday supplement newspapers, or reading RSS feeds, or reading an encyclopaedia, or engaging in online chats or Facebook wall-posting conversations, or email inbox obsession, or watching Flickr photo-feeds, and so on.
These seemingly compulsive activities can often seem to us to be very important and high-priority activities - at the time - and we may even tend to rationalise them like mad when challenged.

Interestingly, as well as in psychology, there seems to be at least some basis in general IT theory to illustrate this characteristic human aspect towards the use of technology. You can find it in the 2nd stage (Contagion) of Nolan's rather dated model of Stages of Growth of IT.
Is having everything available in "real time" where we really want to go?

Target:
actually it's surprising how often these sorts of posts are popping up these days

many people 'in the business' seem to be realising how intrusive or demanding 'always on' is becoming and how little reward they're actually getting from it (or perhaps the cost doesn't justify the benefit), and they're actively choosing to either disconnect, or to severely curtail their online activities in favour of 'a normal life'...

TaoPhoenix:
I think it is not so easy as that.  I believe this mood is more of a counterweight dialectic entry.

After all, for centuries many things were not available in any kind of expedient fashion except through the reporting news services. And except for a token letters to the editor section, readers couldn't hear each other in response to that news.

I have spent a chunk of years where "real life" meant "closed on Oct 1. Will open again in March. Bye!"  Wait for it... "Real Life" (TM) was Always Off. 

Where does one go for five months? The Always On Internet . 

So I suggest it's just the pendulum and all it has to do is swing a little back to the other side.

(Sent from a motel two hours away from my home computer at 4:45 AM from my phone. )

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page