Good Buddy, Bad Buddy
This New York Times Article does come with an unfortunate and ludicrous "interactive graphic," but it otherwise brings, rightly, to our attention the only technoculture trend of the nineties that the recession hasn't successfully tamed: the tendency of the an element of technology industry to stumble onto a possibility and start conceiving of a business one might build around it, without ever troubling themselves about whether or not the idea is a good one or not.
"Presence Awareness" is an idea which follows a side effect of certain applications. For those of you who have never used an "instant message" service, the deal is that with most of these you set up something like what AOL calls a "buddy list" -- which, whenever you're logged into the net and have the program running, shows whether any of the people you regularly communicate with are also logged in and running. Sort of like having speed dial numbers lit up to indicate whether your friends are at home or not. These programs can also show when someone is "idle" -- that is, when they haven't been using the program for a while, even if they are still logged in.
When I worked at the Business Buzzword Factory, many of us used AOL's service to communicate quickly and informally (and, notably, off to the side of the company's Lotus Notes e-mail; one could commit a speculation to IM that you wouldn't have wanted archived and retrievable on the company system; it also works really well for simultaneous trash-talking when you and your pal are both on an unpleasant conference call with a client). It was kind of cool, and made chatting or whatnot with someone in Chicago or Seattle easier; I used it as well with a few friends, but since most of my pals are not online as consistently as I was at that job, it never became habit. I never bothered to install it at home.
Part of the reason I don't really miss it was a nasty feature: as long as your computer was on and the damned thing was running, you couldn't pretend not to have access to a message. Managers in a distant city would see my name in bold on a buddy list, and hit me with a message at 6:59, as I was shredding the days mistakes and on the phone making plans to consume products and do other patriotic volunteering. "Bill?," the message would come from a Higher-Up in another time zone, "Got a sec?" (N.B. The brave of heart simply walk away, responding the next day that they left without logging off at all; but I am not brave of heart and bluff poorly, a fact my spouse exploits every time we play cards). And I would feel compelled to respond, however grudgingly, "Yes?"
These exchanges, of course, led to last-minute assignments: revisions of the presentation that someone else was putting together for the Director of Strategic Partnerships, or the Chief Strategist for Direct Partners, so that important buzzwords appeared with an appropriate and reassuring frequency; the creation of a Statement of Work out of two e-mails, a one-page spreadsheet, and a reference to a competitor's fully developed website; or the notice that I would be on a conference call with the "Project Explorer Team" tomorrow at cockcrow, so that I could "ramp up" for my role collating the results of their illustrious findings.
Where was I? Oh, right, instant messaging and "presence awareness." My point being that while this is a handy communication tool, the fact that it informs others of your "status" cannot be construed to be a benefit, but is rather an unfortunate side effect, like the way Sudafed makes you sleep through the movie in exchange for not blowing your nose throughout the part where Arnold impales one ethnic-stereotype villain on the limb he just tore off of another cariacture of foreign devilry. That "presence awareness" is something bad, a flaw, a glitch, an irritating byproduct. Like repetetive-motion injuries from typing, or the maddening way everyone talks too loud on their cell phones in public, or how you've got no room on your desk for anything but a computer because your monitor is the size of Jackie Gleason's ass. This is stuff you want to get rid of: you want small computers, polite and restrained cell users, and software that doesn't tell everyone else what the hell you are doing.
From the article: "The prospect of information that can reveal a person's availability at a given moment, anywhere in the world strikes many people as both creepy and intriguing." How about "intriguingly creepy" or "intriguing in its creepiness," or perhaps "so fucking creepy you can't help but be intrigued"?
"The days of phone tag are on the way out," said Sonu Aggarwal, chief executive of Cordant". Merciful lord, we thank thee for thy many blessings. It was really getting to us, all of this phone tag. Really holding us back from greatness. It's hearing from a visionary like Mr. Aggarwal that makes me realize that nothing will stop the passionate entrepreneurs of this great society from painstakingly seeking out the things that make our lives difficult, finding a way to make them truly pernicious, and selling them back to us freshly wrapped in synthetic language.
Posted by B T at February 08, 2002 12:33 AM