Student Number: 245673
Affiliation: Curtin University, NET11 Internet Communications, SP4 2008.
Abstract
The articles below are my reflections about four concepts from the Curtin University module NET11 Internet Communications. The concepts are written in a style that I am comfortable with, it may not suit everybody. I tried to let the topics flow straight from my ideas, rather than quote a lot of other academic type papers I wanted to bring some new thoughts to the subjects, I hope I achieved that.
The Netiquette concept analyses a personal incident. In Information and Attention the concept of the human ego is discussed. The concept Human Computer Interfaces, discusses how good and bad design has a large part to play. Lastly in the Automation concept I talk about the good and bad parts of this very progressive technology.
Contents
Site 2: relevant forum discussion
Site 1: Rise of the machines, end of the humans?
Site 2: Singularity University
Concept 33: Information and Attention
Concept 23: Human-Computer Interfaces
Designing Internet Interaction
Site 1: Internet Addiction Test
Concept 7: Netiquette
Quote
“An overwhelming and many-faceted aspect of using email and similar asynchronous communication systems over the Internet is 'Netiquette'. Netiquette describes 'good' and 'bad' conduct in online communication (amongst other forms of Internet use). But what is important about Netiquette is the concept that there are these 'agreed' rules of what is good and bad.”
Response
I had an incident today that I believe shows an important aspect of the Netiquette protocols, some background first.
When on vacation last year we met a great family who we spent a lot of time with, we went surfing (well I tried to anyway), drank lots of wine, and all got on famously. So about six months later we were still keeping in touch and arranging other meetings etc. Then today out of the blue, my wife was forwarded an email from one of the parents in this family. This email was quite disturbing and flew in the face of all our principles. So I took it in my stride to send an email directly back to this person to tell them about how disgusted I was with this email and how we simply could not be friends with them anymore. I won’t go into detail about the email content too much, suffice to say the subject was politics, race and religion, very tricky subjects.
Retrospect
In retrospect I think I could have handled this situation better. My emotions and ego took over and virtually responded to the email without me really knowing. I am sure we have all been there. About 10 minutes later you think “maybe I shouldn’t have said it quite like that”. I believe that by sending the email you release some tension, then the red mist lifts and then the ‘real’ you peers through the fog, to find the damage is done.
So what happens in these situations?
1. The email arrives, you read it, you don’t agree, this is your ego (see Lost In Ego).
2. Then you rant to somebody close to you and they bolster your views.
3. With bolstered ego you write a response.
4. You deliberate a little and have an inkling that you may want to think about this (this is the crucial moment where you need to take control), you have two choices here:
5a. You send it
5b. You don’t send it
Solution
So how can we stop this from happening over and over again?
Quite often the step 5a is executed instead of 5b, this is because the ego and your emotions are very strong, only when you learn to recognise your emotions getting out of control can you begin to halt them in their tracks and regain control of your actions. You can even feel your emotions as a physical response, heartbeat rises, sweat increases, stomach rumbles, etc. I thought I was getting good at recognising this, but obviously some things still push my buttons.
Often you hear the old saying “wait until the next day, sleep on it” before sending a response to an email that your upset about.
Conclusion
I think I can safely say that the way I behaved was bad Netiquette and I feel that I am discovering why these situations arise. Now the hard part, how to eliminate this kind of thing from your communication methods (putting this into practice in your every-day life).
Annotations
Site 1: emailreplies.com
This website gives some good advice on email etiquette; it gives a list of 32 tips and discusses why these are essential to follow. Number 28 on this list is especially relevant for the situation I got into. After thinking about this situation a bit more, I can conclude that I broke the rules, so did the person who sent the original email and so did my wife for forwarding the email onto me. It’s almost like a chain reaction that can only cease when the email isn’t sent to anybody else. Even then, the damage is already done.
Site 2: relevant forum discussion
This is a very interesting discussion that was initiated by somebody who sent an email with a comment of their own, but that email was then sent to other people who got very offended and threatened the person who forwarded on the email. One of the comments mentions that the person should have ‘slept on it’, similar to one of my points. I think that by sleeping on it, you allow your unconscious mind to at least have some bearing on the decision you make, your ego isn’t as strong when you are asleep, or early in the morning when you rise. This helps you to see through the red mist and come to a more rational decision.
Concept 10: Automation
Quote
“Effective email use depends on automation or, more precisely, on the ability of effective users to make decisions and then implement them as to how automation of information processing can assist users to make more efficient use of their valuable time. Automation is critical to processes such as filtering and requires that humans try to anticipate the future and then give precise instructions to their email programs to deal with those future contingencies. Searching for information can involve significant degrees of automation or, at least, surrendering control to seemingly ‘intelligent’ agents. The advantages are, of course, in time saved; and the obvious risk is that you will not get exactly what you want because the agent is less capable than it appears to be or cannot cope with the peculiarities of your specific request. A greater risk, however, is that, using various automated processes can make one question the reliability of the results you receive…by surrendering control over information finding to others we are either lulled into false security or constantly nagged by doubts that the process is time-efficient but quality-inefficient.”
Response
In traditional computer terms, the word automate means the replacement of manual operations by computerized methods. In the context of this concept, it means the automation of tasks that we do on the Internet. Of course some tasks can not be automated, like reading your emails, because that’s personal, but other tasks are ideal candidates for automation. Automation is not a new phenomenon, in fact it’s something that we humans seem to strive for in so many aspects of our life; driving, working, walking and even medical procedures are now being pushed towards more automation, but at what cost?
Reliant
So as we automate more and more aspects of our daily lives, we become less and less skilled at these tasks. As we rely on automation to do these tasks for us, we trust them to complete the tasks as good if not better than we can. Is automation of everything going to mean our brains have less to do and we get less good at remembering stuff and problem solving? This is a hard question to answer, there are people who say the human race genetic development has reached a plateau and we are not going to get any smarter. This may be true, but it underestimates the human race a bit and these statements don’t take into consideration the advancement of other parts of the human race, for instance spiritual advancement.
Controlled
Automation is technically progress, but it is also quite dangerous if not monitored and controlled. For instance there has been an influx of so called intelligent search programs/websites that are supposed to get you the cheapest fight/hotels, etc. based on your search criteria and their ability to search a multitude of similar sites for the best deal. The idea is novel and the implementation of the technology is varied. Some websites do a great job (for example getprice.com.au). In practice these types of websites can be the first site that appears on Google searches. This can be dangerous because these sites are not always going to give you what you want, and sometimes can lead to websites that aren’t in fact the cheapest out there and you eventually pay more because you haven’t manually looked.
Conclusion
Are we getting closer to a period where humans are no longer needed? Can we automate ourselves out of existence? Are the science fiction films that predict the world after it has been taken over by computers realistic of what the future may hold? I don’t know, my feeling is that computers will always remain our friends and not develop into our enemies. This is a hot topic with lots of futurists and technologists at the moment. As far as automation on the Internet, it is good for certain things and bad for others. As we develop the Internet more, this will add to the collective overall intelligence of the Internet, the Internet will be the closest thing to real artificial intelligence that we have, maybe by then automation won’t even come into it because everything will be automatically automated.
Annotations
Site 1: Rise of the machines, end of the humans?
This is a very interesting newspaper article from a highly respected newspaper in
Site 2: Singularity University
This link goes to an overview video from the
Concept 33: Information and Attention
Quote
“One of the newest and most significant ways of thinking about the Internet is termed the ‘attention economy’. In this kind of economy, the most valuable commodity is people’s attention (which can be, for example, bought and sold in the advertising industry): successful websites and other Internet publications / communications are those which capture and hold the increasingly distracted attention of Internet users amidst a swirling mass of informational options.”
Response
Distraction
As I started to read the first chapter that described this concept, a thought sprung into my mind and I opened up another browser tab and continued to go to Google, for some reason I decided it was time to look up reviews of a new football game that I bought over Christmas, but why? I must have had an urge to do this, where did this urge come from?
It seems that my unconscious mind decided that this reading lark was all too serious and probably thought something like: “hey lets get some entertainment here, that’s nice and easy”. Often, too often my attention goes this way, and without my control it seems.
Marketing Talk
I am sure that most marketing people may think that they understand how to make a website grab our attention, but I think that’s more to do with their job retention than our attention. The human mind relies heavily on control, control of the owner of the mind, that’s you and me. It likes to keep you locked into recurring thoughts that repeat on a daily basis. Hey maybe that’s what the marketing guys understand!
Lost in Ego
Our minds all function similarly, because we all have an 'ego' and this ego controls most of our waking thoughts. The word ‘ego’ in this context describes those recurring though patterns that occupy our daily lives, akin to self-obsession, self-preservation, and fear (of the unknown, failure, future and past).
This is why sensationalism, fear campaigns, violence, drugs and sex is a big attention grabber. These things appeal to the ego and pain-body. My favourite Author Eckhart Tolle describes these problems of the mind as 'The Human Condition: lost in thought'. These groundbreaking ideas come from two incredible books called The Power Of Now and A New Earth.
The ego likes to label people and places or situations, because it is able to create a separation or duality this way. It's hard to believe that you would want to do this, but the ego can be understood as something separate to you, almost a living entity in itself, the trick is to not associate the real you to the ego, not an easy task in every day life.
Conclusion
I think that marketing and design companies understand certain aspects of how to get our attention, but I don’t think that they understand what is really going on in a persons mind when their attention is grabbed. On the subject of being lost in your ego, I am hopeful that in the future the human race will take a leap in consciousness where we end up more in control of our mind and thoughts. I’m still learning to do this, sometimes these days when I catch myself obsessing, I actually laugh or smile at how silly the thought was and it's a really good feeling to disconnect yourself from these thoughts and smile at your own madness, I still have a long way to go though.
Annotations
Site 1: Diggy
Here is a perfect example of an Internet marketing and design company that claims to know how to get you on the Internet, quickly and effectively. I put this example here to show how these types of companies can influence the naïve company that want’s a Website but doesn’t understand much about the Internet or what they really want to do. These companies have their place of course, because they give certain companies the opportunity to have and Internet presence.
Site 2: Eckhart Tolle Video
Not sure if it is appropriate to post a video in this section, but I think it is relevant to post this video in this instance. While this video touches lots of other aspects of the human mind, the common theme is the ego, which is a subject covered in this concept. Eckhart talks about how people live with fears of various things, mainly created from our past or projected into our future. There are lots of videos and text on the Internet now about Eckhart, a quick Google search on “Eckhart Tolle” shows 1.6 million hits.
Concept 23: Human-Computer Interfaces
Quote
“The Internet was originally designed to enable humans to instruct computers to act at a distance. The Internet still has this capacity; thus, we begin to see the emergence of a cultural sensibility in which the hard and fast distinctions between humans and computers as different kinds of ‘communicating devices’ breaks down. Telnet and similar functions on the Internet are different to programming and interacting with a computer on your desktop because you can’t physically see the computer at the other end of the connection.”
Response
Hal 9000
While thinking about this subject, Hal from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey came to mind. This film (written by Arthur C Clark) was a representation of human’s fear of computers being able to control their destiny. While this film shows a human fear of communicating with computers using human speech methods, the Internet poses some new fears, but these fears all come down to one thing: trust.
Trust
We are becoming sceptical of communicating with corporate websites, especially customer support websites, with lots of automated agents. Modern Internet users are flocking to community/friend based websites like linkedin or facebook, partly because this is a guaranteed human that you’re interacting with.
From my experiences with designing some of the first telephone based Natural Language Speech Recognition services. I can compare the scepticism and trust issues I seen with this technology to current Internet issues, however good design can help to build the users trust.
Designing Speech Interaction
Let’s explore the impact of the quality of the design, below is a comparison of good and badly designed speech systems.
| Well designed speech application | Badly designed speech application | ||
|
| 1. Wow (the user is impressed) |
| 1. Wow (the user is impressed) |
|
| 2. Slow Steps (user speaks slowly and clearly) |
| 2. Confusion (user speaks slowly, starts to get confused) |
|
| 3. Confidence Increases (builds trust in application) |
| 3. Frustration (application is not responding or understanding user) |
|
| 4. Power User (user speaks quickly and confidently) |
| 4. Anger (user gives up using the application) |
Designing Internet Interaction
Following a similar method above translated to a website.
Addiction
I mentioned above in step 5 of a well designed Website, a possible stage where the user gets addicted to the Website. I have seen this with people I know, especially with the new community based sites like Facebook. The person gets addicted to seeing, commenting-on and posting photos all day. I think that this appeals to the voyeuristic element of our minds.
Conclusion
For the older generation, it feels more natural to speak than use computers, and vice-versa for the younger generation. This is why most companies understand that they need to offer a speech and Internet service that overlaps functionality. That's not to say that the older generation are better at using speech recognition systems, just that they may prefer this to a website, but would probably rather human interaction if given the choice.
Annotations
Site 1: Internet Addiction Test
In line with my comments about people getting addicted to sites like Facebook, there is a general Internet addiction condition that lots of people suffer from. This Internet site allows you to test yourself to see if you’re addicted to the Internet, it’s a strange concept to use the Internet to test if you’re addicted to the Internet. While I think that these tests are a good way to point if you may have a problem or not, they are not really accurate, but worthwhile doing anyway, just in case you do have some problems with Internet over-use, this site can at least help you to realise this.
Site 2: silicon.com
This link contains a very interesting article about trusting the Internet for transactions and other things. It is fairly negative, but it backs up this negativity with a great story of the inventors of the Unix operating system. It talks about how easy it would have been for them to include a check in the Unix login system to make it so that they could login to every Unix computer in the world. They talk about how they could have done this, but infecting the C compilers that compiled the Unix operating system code.
Bibliography
| Tolle, E. The Flowering of Human Consciousness. (2008, Aug 30th). Retrieved 2008, Dec 23rd. From http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2546949894540352546 |
| Iskold, A. The Attention Economy Overview. (2007, March 1st). Retrieved: 2008, Dec 28th. From http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php |
| Koo, L. Community Newsletter: Q&A Share with us some of your e-mailing etiquette. Retrieved: 2008, Dec 21st. From http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=269313&messageID=2615173 (2007, December 25th) |
| Hawley, John K. Automation Doesn't Automatically Solve Problems. (Quality Progress May 1996) |
| Howker, E. Rise of the machines, end of the humans? (2009, February 4th). Retrieved: 2009, February 4th. From http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/rise-of-the-machines-end-of-the-humans-1626990.html |
| Moffet Field, |
| Leo. Living With Tolle #10: When the Pain Body Awakens. (2009, January 8th) Retrieved: 2009, January 15th From http://livingwithtolle.com/2009/01/08/living-with-tolle-10-the-pain-body Real, J. Tolle on ego. (2004, January 26th). Retrieved: 2009, January 14th. http://realjoe.com/post/1115 |
| Tolle, E. The Power of Now. New World Library; 1 edition (1999, September 27th). |
| Tolle ,E. A New Earth. New World Library; 1 edition. (2008, January 30th) . |
| Moderator, |
| Matula, Val. Natural language speech recognition: Expanding the dimensions of IVR. (2008, August). Retrieved: 2008 December 20th. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3973/is_200008/ai_n8906903 |
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