[Air-L] Multi-modal communications comparisons?

[c-soc-aoir at dagnon.net]

Hello all,

This is my first foray into publicly attempting to ask this question, so
please bear with my wandering hither and yon.


I would like to provide new and/or differing communication mechanisms
through the Internet, though I realize that I should really know how and
why and by whom current mechanisms are being utilized in order to have a
chance at coming up with more useful tools.  However simply comparing and
contrasting existing modalities seems like a herculean effort.

Do such comparisons exist?  The few things Google has lead me to are
pretty limited in scope either in modalities covered, aspects being
compared, or the details of comparing them. I would like comparisons
including but not limited to CMC.  Preferably it would compare
communication mediums or processes including face-to-face, postal mail,
phone, cell, texting, web cams, MUDs/MOOs/MMOGs, bulletin boards (physical
and digital), ad-hoc meetings, conferences, and possibly anything else
from hieroglyphs, papyrus scrolls, and sign language to websites, wikis,
blogs, forums, and tweets.

In particular I would love to see comparisons (whether backed up by
statistics, surveys, or at least well-reasoned and explained arguments) of
many aspects though at the moment users' expectations about the other
users' usage patterns seems key as, aside from the technology's interface
and reliability the other person/people seem like the largest hurdle to a
good user experience.  For example: I am emailing this to the listserv,
hoping for some well reasoned questions, constructive criticisms on the
topic/question/examples, and suggested (freely available) readings to help
me on my way as I'm making this request in honest earnestness, yet this
message carries only some if any of that to you.  I've considered
facilitating explicit definitions of the expected content and timing
responses included with a communication, though lack of a mechanism or
awareness to define them may not be the reason they're left implicit
within the communication streams.

Also simply the differences in usage patterns varies drastically: some
people almost never use a phone of any kind, others flow freely between
calling, texting, photos, video, and emailing from their cells.  However
people can carry heavy- or no-expectations of getting a response
instantaneously.  And the toll of having/not having all those (implicit)
expectations met (dependency, anger, ?).

Other interesting aspects may include: any measurements or classifications
comparing informativeness, expressiveness, understandability, immediacy,
reliability, accuracy, interactiveness, ease-of-use, ease-of-adoption,
circles of popularity, moderation (self, peer, superior, IT, corporate,
law/gov't, morality), fail over, redundancy, etc.  Still the differences
between sender and receiver (and if/how those are negotiated or
negotiable), side effects of the modality or other influences including
business or cultural (eg. cell phones are much more popular in Israel
because they're cheaper than in the U.S.) including new cultural effects
or sub-cultures, and how much the communication itself is shaped by the
medium or process seem like significant realms needing at least
summarization if not exploration.

Are the best (communication) technologies the ones you don't realize are
there?  Or the ones that call for your attention every minute?

Bonus points for including different historical versions of the same
modality within the comparison (eg. initial telephones required
human-operators to connect calls, vs voice-operated cellphones).  Lastly
may be cause-and-effect of imposed limitations after the initial
technological pushes: many large companies now forbid any social
networking at work and any critical messages ever, DMCA/other take down
notices for BitTorrent sites, YouTube videos, and company-criticizing
websites, the DMCA itself, electronic spam, many networking ports have
been shut down by organizations because they're additional attack vectors
for security breeches - resulting in most programs working over port 80,
DTV signals are more fragile than analog signals so they cause more
outages vs degradation, and President Obama needing permission (and
security hardening) to have a Blackberry...


Is that too much to ask?  8)


Highly curious, hoping I don't have to do all this work myself, and
willing to carry on this conversation in other modalities.

Chris Dagnon
Collaborative Communication, LLC
Madison, WI  U.S.A.