<story><title>Always Bet on Text (2014)</title><url>https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koonsolo</author><text>Ah come on, this is not accurate at all.&lt;p&gt;We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc.&lt;p&gt;Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software.&lt;p&gt;The tech is obviously here already.&lt;p&gt;But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.</text></item><item><author>robenkleene</author><text>The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology?&lt;p&gt;Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I&amp;#x27;d bet less than 10% could draw a circle.&lt;p&gt;But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle.&lt;p&gt;This points to there being a limitation in the technology for working with other forms of media, not the effectiveness of the communication medium itself.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to say that text isn&amp;#x27;t also a better communication medium, but it is to say, until the technology has improved for communicating with other media, it&amp;#x27;s difficult to compare without basing the decision on the limitations of the technology.&lt;p&gt;In other words, most of the perceived advantages of text are really advantages of text being easier to represent digitally (or generally reproduced, e.g., printing press), not advantages of text as a communication medium itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sfifs</author><text>&amp;gt; But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech&lt;p&gt;It turns out that people who are highly fluent in a language with a compact alphabet like English prefer sending text chats. My Chinese colleagues and friends routinely send many more voice chat messages than text because it is much more efficient than typing mandarin.&lt;p&gt;Also in India, I&amp;#x27;ve observed that people fluent in vernacular but not in written English primarily send voice chat messages - again because the vernacular text input is very inefficient&lt;p&gt;So interestingly does my daughter who &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; type English text easily but as she always grew up in a world her parents and her friends parents had smartphones, she finds it a lot more comfortable to send voice chat messages.&lt;p&gt;The other benefit of chat is asynchronocity. You&amp;#x27;re not forcing the other party to do a context switch and signalling that they can get to ot.</text></comment>
<story><title>Always Bet on Text (2014)</title><url>https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koonsolo</author><text>Ah come on, this is not accurate at all.&lt;p&gt;We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc.&lt;p&gt;Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software.&lt;p&gt;The tech is obviously here already.&lt;p&gt;But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.</text></item><item><author>robenkleene</author><text>The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology?&lt;p&gt;Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I&amp;#x27;d bet less than 10% could draw a circle.&lt;p&gt;But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle.&lt;p&gt;This points to there being a limitation in the technology for working with other forms of media, not the effectiveness of the communication medium itself.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to say that text isn&amp;#x27;t also a better communication medium, but it is to say, until the technology has improved for communicating with other media, it&amp;#x27;s difficult to compare without basing the decision on the limitations of the technology.&lt;p&gt;In other words, most of the perceived advantages of text are really advantages of text being easier to represent digitally (or generally reproduced, e.g., printing press), not advantages of text as a communication medium itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gmueckl</author><text>No, GP is right, for a simple reason: look at your input devices. A keyboard and mouse&amp;#x2F;touchpad combo is most effective at interacting with text. The story would be entirely different if the main interface was e.g. a stylus. A instant messaging service that sends hand written scribbles instead of text follows much more naturally from that.</text></comment>