Awareness of Presence - Good or Bad Thing in a Working Tool?
Imagine a professionally successful Baby Boomer who works for a higher education
institution and who probably got their start in information technology working
with punch cards or early terminals, some of their early work was probably in
programming. This is the kind of person who checks their e-mail twice a day
- once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and also checks and answers
voice mail on schedule. They learned early on that the best way for them to
be productive is to shut out the rest of the world and focus, to concentrate
on the task at hand.
This same person is in a position of decision making about whether to support
or suppress what may well be the preferred method of communication among Americans
who are under the age of 21 - instant messaging? Yikes. That would be like me
having the power to decide that amusement parks don't need roller coaster rides
and, in fact, that amusement parks needn't really even exist, despite the fact
that many people enjoy them and that they are a thriving, valid industry.
Did I tell you that a completely fail to comprehend what others enjoy from
roller coaster rides?
From here, I could rant a bit about how we need to be careful not to shut down
someone else's favorite tool, or not to make possibly invalid judgments about
their productivity. I could go on about how one of the very simplest ways to
make an IT staffer's job easier is to tightly control what our users can do,
to limit their choices based on our own needs and working styles and assumptions,
and about how wrong that would be.
But instead, briefing up on this earlier, I came across some pretty interesting
articles and found that there are academicians who are studying up on instant
messaging and that they have a vocabulary that provides words and phrases for
some of what I have perceived in IM. It's useful to have a common vocabulary
about things, so the gist of my piece this week is to share a few important
words or phrases that can be used to discuss the qualities of instant messaging
and perhaps make discussion about it more productive.
To be perfectly frank, I really like and enjoy instant messaging and find it
perhaps my most useful working tool, especially in light of the spam epidemic
that is creating chaos in my in box. So, if you're a cranky old guy who came
up through the ranks via programming and you're inclined to want to just shut
off instant messaging in the dorms . . . don't read this . . . let the folks
who agree with me learn the words and phrases that might just make their next
argument with you more persuasive.
My favorite paper from the literature, so far, is one called "Theorizing
the Unintended Consequences of Instant Messaging for Worker Productivity,"
by a couple of researchers at Case Western Reserve University. (A link to that
PDF is available as a reference, below.) Julie Rennecker and Lindsey Godwin,
draw from the works of others and from their own creativity and describe some
features of IM as follows.
IM has presence awareness - this means that when you are running IM
there is a presence perceivable to you of "others" who are available
to you. Your buddy list tells you who is online, whether they are idle or away,
and more. You can use this to estimate how likely it is you can make contact
with someone. Whenever you are online and IM is turned on, you are part of the
social swarm.