Expression Through The Computer: It’s In the Details
With the continual expansion of broadband and the compliment of ever-advancing technology, what methods should we use to better express ourselves online? Will users of instant messaging software willingly upgrade to video messaging once the technology is no longer a hindrance? Perhaps e-mail will evolve from simple text to a recorded audio message. Yet, maybe it’s not the quality or features of a communication’s medium that we should be addressing, but rather how we express ourselves through it. Rather than focus on the expressive fidelity of a medium, we should analyze the workarounds we have constructed around a communication channel’s limitations; it is through these nuances that we learn the most about human expression.
Any form of communication outside of face-to-face interaction can be considered artificial, and computer software is no exception. Comparing computer-based communication to the in-person equivalent is unfair; the company of another human being is by far the most robust expressive experience. However, this experience is not always what is required to most effectively communicate. If we wished to measure the success of communication outside of face-to-face, we must contrast these mediums against one another.
Books, newspaper articles, letters, and other written materials have served as the vehicle for writer expression for hundreds of years. Naturally, the written word found its way to the Internet, where writers now author Web pages, online journals, and e-mail, the modern day equivalent to the written letter. E-mail is faster to prepare than its mail equivalent, and usually receives a much quicker response, yet somehow, handwritten letters and mailed text still carry a more personal aspect to them. Perhaps it’s the extra effort put into actually handwriting the letter, or maybe its some residue left over from simpler times, but we rely on the postal service for delivering our formal wedding invitations and the like. In any case, humanity found a way to work around the barriers of the written medium, and in some cases proved it more effective than other highly detailed mediums. Would Hemingway have been as praised had his detail-rich tone been spelled out through photography or video?
Unlike letters or e-mail, instant messaging (IM) provides feedback in an immediate manner, yet has its own set of limitations. IM is a more spontaneous medium, as its nature yields immediate feedback from a recipient. Unlike a letter or e-mail, time and revision are not often applied to honing the transferred message. Given that its users body language is concealed and they aren’t tied to their true identity, IM can easily be criticized as a medium for irresponsible, unserious writing. Furthermore, users often carry on multiple IM conversations at once, something considered rude in person, but unconsciously accepted by their fellow messagers.
Like other written mediums, users of IM have found a way to express themselves through the limitations of text. Because IM is spontaneous, yet not as fluid as speaking, a good IM conversation can last hours longer and feel just as, if not more, fulfilling to the participants. Even proper etiquette has been outlined for IM; users can post “away messages” to notify others that they are not currently accepting messages, and some users converse with only one other user at a time to prevent others from detecting their attention being distributed.
Aside from body language and authorship, what inherently lacks in the IM message itself is tone. On the telephone, we can detect changes in the mood of our speaker. That being the case, audio chat would seem to be an obvious successor to text-based IM, yet, bandwidth concerns aside, it has not dethroned its predecessor. Text-based IM has been defined as a different medium altogether, and standards have already been set without the account of audio. In an effort to make up for the lack of tone, IM users have standardized a language of their own that fits with the spontaneity of the medium. Similes, or J, have taken on a form of meaning to better convey tone, emotion, humor, and sarcasm. This symbology has spilled out into other written text, including this one. Abbreviations like LOL (Laughing Out Loud), IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), and BRB (Be Right Back) may seem to be cryptic insider speak to those that don’t use IM, yet have become so much a part of communication that high school English teachers criticize this slang as a degradation of the English language.
Besides these “standards”, there’s also etiquette to take into account. Could you imagine carrying on multiple phone conversations at once? If we were in an IM chat room, the noise pollution alone would lead to the deterioration of many conversations. Then, there’s privacy concerns. It wouldn’t matter if you were carrying on a private discussion on IM—with audio chat, everyone in the real room can hear you! Lastly, while users can often carry a phone conversation while doing other actions passively, the computer has a tendency to require active, conscious input. What complicates things further is that the more personal a medium gets, the more one feels the need to be polite. Traditional text-based IM jettisons these usual pleasantries in lieu of speed. The merging of audio and IM creates a confusion of accepted behavior, ultimately making the medium less inviting.
If expression were best conveyed by detail, video would be the only method of messaging used. This method of chat has not caught on either, though, because it shares the same handicaps of audio chat. With video chat, users are chained to their visual identity and their body language. While body language is usually one of the strongest identifiers of expression, its presence in video chat is forced, giving an awkward, unwanted feeling to the receiver. Users are forced to focus on their viewer rather than continually change focus (as one would naturally do), are forced to be present at all times, and can’t politely do other actions simultaneously without feeling rude.
Computer-based communication has been criticized for its archaic methods of communication, most of which are attributed to the lack of bandwidth available to convey communication more like its real life counterpart. Maybe we should begin to approach IM, e-mail, chat rooms, and other Internet-based communication tools like that of a game or an escape from reality: we willingly immerse ourselves within the confines of a certain structure and learn to convey ourselves better across mediums not by simply communicating through the medium, but by discovering how we can redefine it.