ACM Queue - IM, Not IP (Information Pollution) - A steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone's health.

ACM Queue - IM, Not IP (Information Pollution) - A steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone's health.: "Whether or not you believe in my control panel, the most important point is to change our ideology for computer-mediated communication. The old thinking was that more information was better. If a unit of information were sent, it would have to be transmitted and received at all costs. The new thinking must be that human time is our most precious resource. Stop strip-mining it." - I found this article via Rebecca's Pocket - my favorite source for all things random and fascinating. Yet this article in particular really troubles me.

Jake Nielsen seems to perceive IM as the new scourge of our time. With email bogged down by never-ending SPAM, he sees IM as a band-aid to the situation. In fact, he suggests that the main reason IM is gaining in popularitly among the adult population is because e-mail is so bogged down, its difficult to navigate through the spam-ridden inbox to answer in a timely manner. Nielsen proposes to "save" email by producing a sort of an intelligent-agent control panel that reduces IM "interruptions".

Yet I think Jakob Nielsen might be missing something here. E-mail is not dying and no one is killing it. Simply, its being relegated to perform functions that fit the needs of its users more. E-mail is great at relating timely yet not too urgent information, sending attachments, leaving messages. IM, on the other hand, is a way to get an instant answer in the event that your correspondent is available. Both forms of communication can produce more or less corse interruptions (from pop-ups to tool-bar tray icons), yet IM already allows its users a higher degree of control (indicating a busy or unavailable status in some programs, ability to make self invisible in others).

I don't think IM is an answer to overload of e-mail. In fact, the two mediums perform very different fucntions for its users. It is myopic to simply start crying wolf about those nasty interruptions that decrease our productivity by "letting your agenda be controlled by anybody who has your screen name". This statement makes the assumption that e-mail does not have this effect on our productivity and the little "new mail" icon in the tool-bar tray really doesn't attract anyone's attention.

Yes new ideas on how to control attention and access are in order. I agree it is necessary to re-evaluate how to deal with the candy-attention-grabbing qualities of the Internet when many of us have problems concentrating as it is. Yet misunderstanding a technology and thus dubbing it much less than what it is - a light-weight communication technology that provides a way to keep in contact and instantly exchange ideas - is not the answer. In fact, a colleague of mine pointed out last night that Jakob Nielsen's reaction to IM is reminiscent of a novice adult user. Many new users feel overwhelmed by this new mode of communication until they understand the social norms that have evolved with its use. Few people expect all their IM's answered immediately, just like we expect to spend a fraction of time talking to each other's voicemail even when calling a cell phone.

That human time is our most precious resource is NOT new thinking. This has been (or at least should have been) the thinking all along. Coming from CMU with all its legacy of Alan Newell and Herbert Simon, I can point to those luminaries and their concerns of the limits of human attention two decades ago! It has taken technologists about that amount of time to realize that information overload is real and problematic. Yet instant communication might not be the worst of it. In fact, it might be an elegant solution to some problems with heavier and more commiting forms of communication, such as email.

Source: Rebecca's Pocket