Two events in the last two days have gotten me thinking about courtesy.

One was an IM gaffe: Nik IMed me while I was on a Webex session, sharing my co-worker’s desktop and unable to see her message. By the time I got back to her she was incensed that I had not replied and instead had “rudely changed my status.” In fact my IM client had set me to auto-away after being idle for a period of time but the perception was that I couldn’t be bothered to say, “Now’s not a good time” and had instead switched my status as a means of saying, “Scram.”

The second is this article in Wired about courteously using technology (Warning: Article contains some rough language). You might think I’d be in favor of such an article, and the general sentiment I do agree with, but the overall presentation of the article suggests a rudely overbearing attitude that completely undermines the thrust of the message and misses the mark about the root cause of a lot of these issues.

The point I’m trying to make is really a simple one: Technology is presenting us with a completely new set of social problems that need to be thoughtfully dealt with and—in some cases—reasonably adjusted to. The mistake that is often made is applying practices and prejudices to new methods of communication, work and entertainment that really only apply to established routines.

I’ve spoken on the subject of IM before. Aside from the usual trouble of forcing people to be half decent writers who might not otherwise be so inclined and therefore subject to the pitfalls inherent in the limitations of printed text, the method of connecting to and disconnecting from conversations is atypical enough to become open to serious misunderstanding between people or groups who approach the medium with different mindsets.

In the example from above, I obviously made a mistake in not setting my status to “Away” prior to switching my view away from the running programs. But consider this: Nikki herself is nearly always logged in and online in AIM, yet her status very rarely changes from “Away,” even when she’s actively chatting with someone. Her rationale is something along the lines that she doesn’t want to feel obliged to chat with any ol’ person who pops online just because she’s perhaps available. By the same token, she won’t necessarily answer the phone just because it’s ringing and she could pick it up. Communication, to her, is at her discretion.

From a certain perspective one can understand the sentiment. Modern communication is more invasive than ever, thrusting itself upon us almost ceaselessly. The problem with this as evidenced by our (very minor, for the record) misunderstanding is that at some point there will be competition for our attention. Being connected via technology to a massive number of possible people and places simultaneously (not to mention our regular sphere of influence around our physical selves) means that increasingly we run the risk of having to play conductor to a barrage of competing communiques. We have to learn how to leverage our understanding of this phenomenon with our desire to take advantage of the technology that is simultaneously interrupting our status quo.

The problem I have with a lot of people who whine about cell phone use in public is that if some people had it their way cell phones would never be used except in the privacy of one’s home. Which is just retarded. Where I see these cell phone nazis arguments falling short is that they seem to forget that people can be annoying by having distracted, animated, volumous or emotional conversations face-to-face with someone. I’m sure you’ve sat in a restaurant at a booth next to some couple having a serious relationship crisis or next to some oversized sales buffoon with a voice projection range of 2.4 miles: The point is that people don’t need cell phones to be obnoxious.

But somehow the inability to eavesdrop on both halves of an annoying conversation makes it infuriating to some people. To whom I have to say: Get over it. Irritating people are going to find a way to be irritating with or without cell phones, ringtones, body odor, close talking, halitosis, soup slurping, pretentiousness, dry mouth smacking, IM buzzing, email forwarding or any of a billion little things that could potentially drive you crazy. And you know what? You irritate someone out there, too.

Really the solution to any perceived problems with these technologies is to find some method of determining what an appropriate social inclusion standard for them might be. Like saying “Hello?” when you pick up the phone, determining what page most people ought to be on would help ease some of the growing pains of having these types of situations arise.

There needs to be a bit of give and take on both sides: People embracing technology need to understand that circumstances ought to dictate behavior instead of capability. Just because you can have a conversation with someone in a movie theater, doesn’t mean you should. Some people still haven’t gotten the clue that talking through a movie is rude, so this is always going to be a work in progress. But likewise the detractors that spend more time griping about other people’s use of communication than is truly warranted need to understand that just because something changes the way we co-exist with each other doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t adapt to it.

Here’s what I’m getting to: I’m suggesting a window of opportunity for communication exchanges to establish and a second window to keep them active. Not a technologically-mandated window mind you, but a socially enacted one. Because the primary gripes and problems seem to stem from people competing for each other’s attention, here’s what I’m saying: First of all, use the methods offered by the technology itself to coordinate communication exchanges. Set status messages (note to self); leave voicemails; redirect calls and emails, etc. Secondly, I think a rough one minute or one and a half minute delay time in establishing communications is good enough. Think about a phone call: Most phones don’t ring for five minutes straight, waiting until the callee is ready to answer, they ring a few times and if it isn’t picked up, the communication is never established.

This applies to IM easily enough, if I send someone a message that says, “Yo what up” and I get no reply for a minute or two, it’s fair to say that the recipient is not ready, able or willing to engage me in conversation at the moment. Socially I should take that no worse than I would if I called and got no answer on a regular telephone. Sometimes people just aren’t available. No harm, no foul. But the same can be applied to in-person conversations where some party is otherwise engaged in a communication, such as when a person on their cell phone reaches the front of a check-out line. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the checker to wait for a minute or so and then ask the customer to step out of line until they can attend to their purchases.

The final step is to recognize the end of a communication session without necessarily having received a clear “All done” signal. The delay time there might be a little longer, but interrupted communications will probably be resumed at a later time so I’m actually inclined to say that the window there ought to be shorter. If someone becomes unresponsive for thirty seconds or so, disconnect the communication and re-establish it upon the unresponsive party’s return. Again, the biggest element should be the social acceptability of saying, “I got interrupted when talking to that person, but it’s not a personal affront to me, it’s just a fact of having to deal with interacting with people remotely.”

And of course one’s physical presence and surroundings should always take precedence.

Read Stuff. What Else are You Going to Do?

A couple of interesting things I happened across:

• Here are some screenshots of the Internet Explorer 7 beta. Wow, what a shock: They completely ripped off Firefox. You know what? I bet Firefox suffers for it, too. It’s a shame.
• A curious article describing why the current income tax system is doomed to fail.
• Looks like the new Intel-based Macs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Honestly, I kind of wish that IBM could have done what Apple was looking for with the Gx chips. Somehow having to re-code everything, run stuff in emulation (Rosetta) and all that hooey sounds like a big pain in the neck; plus as long as Macs contained a fairly unique chip I could say to myself, “This is why these machines cost so much more than a similar PC.” Now I have no idea why they’d cost as much except that Apple can get away with charging what they do. At any rate I certainly won’t be getting a MacBook Pro anytime soon despite the fact that I wanted a Powerbook up until last week. Not that it matters; I’m getting a new laptop from work today anyway which puts me over my maximum capacity for personal computers as it is.