Yesterday at school my students and I read and discussed a recent article from the New York Times about the 'online disinhibition effect', otherwise known as 'flaming'. The article covered two topics; losing your inhibitions while in the anonymous virtual world of the net and sending emails and messages that are misinterpreted by their recipient because of the lack of visual clues that are present in face to face communications.
We talked about what could be done to solve the problem of misinterpreted messages; the article mentioned video e-mails. But we thought about adding another button on the menu... the REGRET button.
How often have you clicked on SEND and only moments later regretted it? The REGRET button would solve this. Just click on it and if your message was still unopened by the receiver it would be magically removed, but if it had already been opened an automatic response would be sent containing a polite message that would ask that the receiver disregard the previous message. Hmmm... it might work!
Friday, February 23, 2007
6 comments:
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After living in Libya for twenty-six years you would think my Arabic would be perfect, but it is far, far, far from that. I do get my point ... -
In my last post I wrote about how I felt on the first day of my arrival back to Libya after a month's absence. I said it was dirtier and...
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The rains have finally come, accompanied by lightening and thunder. The weather is cooler and the dust has settled. We'll see how treac...
Yes, yes, yes - definitely need a regret button - get on that right away - pulease.
ReplyDeleteIf you use Microsoft Outlook yo can recall unopened emails and messages from who ever you sent them too. I have used it many times!!
ReplyDeleteOutlook only works if the person is actually logged on, and not even all the time when they are.
ReplyDeletemessage recall will not work if the recipient is not using Outlook.
ReplyDeletemore to read
yep the regeret button, i need it so much, cause i'm a person that is moved sometimes with emotion not rational thinking lol, so u can see how i need it ;)
ReplyDeleteTo comment on the heart of the message, I think the lack of visible emotion in chat/email correspondence is what led to the initial creation of "smileys" in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSomeone, somewhere, thought that adding "lol" behind a sarcastic comment would add the touch of humor the comment was lacking in its textual form.
So, wherever that person is, I blame them for the inordinate amount of Smileys that populate my otherwise adult conversational dialogues online!