Many moons ago, people used to leave short, discrete messages on answering machines. The message used to state the name of the person calling and the reason they called. People were confused and shy about this new technology, thus not leaving long speeches in their messages. Slowly, answering machines became more popular and people started leaving longer messages, stating the reason they called along with any other unrelated thoughts they might have had on their minds. It was all right, since checking the answering machine at home was supposedly the only way to know that someone had contacted you, and it costed nothing. The same way people were excited about leaving messages on answering machines was the same way people were excited listening to their answering machines. Just like answering machines, new advances in technology allowed for better levels of communication, and these communication channels were also respected in the beginning, and then overused.

After the trend of leaving long messages came the practise of calling people repeatedly, leaving multiple messages in a day. It was as if one was making sure that the messages left were not disappearing by themselves. Then came cell phones: people started leaving short messages in the beginning, treating cell phones with respect. Then suddenly, at a much faster rate than home phones, people started leaving long messages on cell phones, even though people knew that checking voice messages on cell phones cost money most of the time. As the idea of leaving cell phone messages started becoming the norm, text messages came along to let people send text messages to each other. Text messages became the new norm, with some people sending more text messages every day than the number of people they had in their address book.

Now, it seems that many people are turning to the likes of Skype and Yahoo Messenger Voice Mail, among other online messengers, to leave messages. Many people are treating such protocols as being the accepted norm. Someone recently emailed me saying “I left a voice message on your Yahoo messenger last week and you never called back“, which is interesting. I’ve not used Yahoo Messenger for voice messages for a long time, and I have not yet considered it an official platform to relay important messages. Similarly, people tell me “Oh, didn’t you get my message with the new meeting time? I left it on your AIM this morning.” I leave my computer on most of the time, even when I leave the house. Thus, many messages I read for the first time are already around 24 hours old. For some reason many people cannot leave their homes without a cell phone, yet they also do not use it to make important phone calls.

Long time ago, people used to be wary of embracing anything new. Nowadays, many people embrace any new piece of technology as if their life depends on it. While I love the idea of trying something new in nontraditional ways, I’m wary of people who try new things without knowing how to use those things. Many people never try to learn how to use something efficiently either. Instant messaging is great, though if alternate channels like cell phones are available, instant messaging is still not the platform to use if one wishes to convey something extremely important, like changing a meeting time at the last minute, letting an employee go in your company, or even like breaking up with someone, though one day such things will be commonly practised online. Any new technology should be used to gain efficiency for everyone involved in the beginning, not just the user. If one uses a piece of technology to their own benefit, and that results in inconvenience for others around them, the only end result will be short term convenience for the user and long term alienation from other people. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. That is what defines common sense among many people, and that is what many people forget: common sense applies to everything, including the use of technology.

What is your opinion on this? What do you think about the different methods and channels described above? Do you use any channel of communication extensively and consider it the norm? Do you have any opinion on which channel could be improved or used more, or which ones are being misused? If so, please let me know.