My Desire to Type
When I send a message on Google Talk and don’t get a response, I sometimes get strange urges. Mostly these involve having existential discussions with myself through the one-sided non-response of a person’s inactive messenger.
I’m really not sure where this comes from. Probably having taken just enough philosophy courses to have it ruminating the the back of my mind at all times, but not enough of them to have that silent wisdom people appreciate.
So while I stare at a status icon, I think of what it means.
Like the away icon. In what way are you away? Does this mean gone? How gone does that mean? If someone is ‘away’ do I still treat them as a functioning entity even though I cannot confirm such with own senses?
Similarly available causes a whole other host of problems. Available to chat? Available for dinner? Or does it just mean ‘present’ at the monitor and hoping no one notices? If the latter what does it mean when I decide to interrupt that ‘alone’ but ‘available’ time?
At this point I get the urge to explore these thoughts by simply typing them in as message, and maybe questions, until someone responds. I’m not sure how that would work. I may experiment with this on AIM or Yahoo IM at some point. I pick those because it is much easier to find random people to experiment on rather than testing my theories on friends… This is mostly because the likely outcome of having a one sided philosophical discussion inside someone’s chat box is likely to result in having a meeting with the ban hammer.
I don’t use IMs anymore, because I don’t want get interrupted. It’s a great tool for younger people. Eh, sounds like I’m old. Heh.
@ Michael – It’s actually a good idea to keep them off at work for exactly the reason you gave. One I should practice at some point.
It is useful though, although I have to say I don’t use it nearly as much as most people in my age group. Well, at least if you exclude the fact that we use MSN Messenger for quick interoffice communication.