Kristoph Minchau

Hating MSN...

• I believe that MSN is one of the biggest time wasters ever invented; that, and PowerPoint (because people spend way too much time on unnecessary things like fancy themes and backgrounds, transitions, and my biggest pet peeve, the stupid sound effects).
• Now, on that note, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire are also big time wasters... but the purpose of those programs are different. MSN and PowerPoint are both designed to "improve" productivity, and enable better communication... the fact that they waste time, is a bad side effect. Whereas, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire's whole purpose *is* to waste time and give the user some entertainment, and in doing that, they succeed. Hence why MSN and PowerPoint are time wasters.
• MSN is a time waster because every time I go on, 3 hours go by, even though the whole conversation could have lasted 30 min over the phone. The reason for this is because MSN is a less efficient method of communication. The reasons for this are:
  

1. I am a relatively (compared to all of the other people on MSN) slow typer (only ~30wpm).
2. Typing is usually slower than speaking, and so, therefore it takes more time to carry out the same conversation over MSN compared to a phone conversation.
3. 60% of the conversation usually consists of "lol", emoticons :-), and other acronyms/misuses of words to convey "feeling" and "emotion". The reason for this is inherent because of the medium. The written word is "cold", and lacks emotion. To enable the written word to convey "emotion", it takes many words to describe the emotion that is being conveyed, then the actual text of the conversation that occurring. Whereas, when you are talking to someone, just by the inflection in the voice can you convey efficiently any emotion that you need to (for ex. a sniffle can convey sadness, an upbeat voice can convey happiness). That being said, just plain talking (usually via the phone), is still less efficient than face to face conversation, where a whole conversation can be conveyed with a simple raise of the eyebrow.

• Being a slow typer has it's inherit disadvantages, which make talking over MSN less pleasant than a phone conversation:
• I get frustrated because I am a slow typer, this is because by the time I type in a response to a question, the other person has already typed a whole lot more things into the conversation, usually involving a change of topic. But essentially, It takes time to type in things.
• Other people get frustrated that I am a slow typer, because they want an "instant" reply, and they are impatient (explained more below).
• It is hard to multi-task while talking to people, because when you try to do something else, you do 5 seconds worth of work, before "bleoup" "bleoup", and MSN is "calling" for attention like a baby calling out "feed me". And you just have to cave in, and look, and reply as soon as possible (partly just to give the impression of responsiveness, because I type slow).
• MSN breeds impatience. This is because:
• Since MSN is "instant" communication, the expectations of people using it have changed. People have started to become impatient because it has the ability to be "instant", they begin to expect everything to be instant, while at the same time degrading the quality of the communication.
• This trend has occurred over history as communication has become more and more "instant".
• Starting from early history, communication was limited to how fast you could walk to the next town to talk to someone, or you're "messenger", so talking to someone was a special event, and usually if you did this you had something important to say, and you had a good quality talk with the other person.
• Then came mail, which was delivered by "messengers", and finally postmen, but even though the medium could now travel around the world if need be, there was usually a significant wait involved (on the order of months at times), and so usually the letter that was sent was well thought out, and high quality.
• Then the telegraph came, which was the first nearly "instant messaging". But due to the cost of sending a telegraph (and the charge per letter), made it faster to send messages, but the quality of conversation declined.
• Then came e-mail, where you could "instantly" send a message to anyone, anywhere, anytime. This allowed people to send messages whenever they felt like, and so messages sometimes degraded to the point of consisting of one "yeah". The ease of use, and quickness of e-mail allowed people to send more quantity... but at the expense of quality. (how can anyone send a "quality" message if it took them 2 minutes to write? (BTW: this message has taken over an hour to craft (and I mean craft (Question: does knowing how much time someone puts into a message change the way you read the message? for ex. you probably would read a book because people have spent hours and hours making it, whereas e-mail it takes 2 minutes, and then MSN where the average messaging time is 10 seconds.)))). And usually people expect replies back within a day or two (because they become more impatient).
  
• Then came MSN, and "Instant Messaging" which was a natural extension to e-mail, except that people expect messages back "instantly"... no 1-2 day delay. Just because you can send messages instantly, naturally means that you have to send messages back as fast as possible, or as "instantly" as possible. This has caused people to become impatient... always wanting more NOW! In the hurry of trying to reply fast, the quality of communication degrades significantly.
• Call me "old fashioned", but I think that society has taken a step backward with these developments. I still think that the best mode of communication is face to face, with phone conversations being a close second, due to the fact that you can tell emotions and feelings more instantly than "instant messengers", as well as communicate more efficiently. I guess what I desire is quality, efficient communication, and MSN doesn't fulfill those goals in general. E-mail, does have the potential to be useful, as long as people slow down and take the time to write, and that does not just mean that you put down words for the sake of putting down words, and also that people read, and not just skim through an e-mail (if you got a letter, you would take the time to read it, and it is unlikely that you would skim over it, whereas, with an e-mail, due to the speed, and impatience, people will skim over it)
• Despite all that I have said, I will agree, that MSN, and e-mail have their places, and are very good at what they do (especially if it involves talking to someone across the world (I will not dispute that MSN is better than a $20 phone call... but... if you knew you were going to make a $20 phone call... what would you say? Would the quality of the conversation go up? I would argue most likely (for ex. you probably wouldn't have extra "dribble" like talking about the weather)). And also by allowing you to talk to multiple people all at once is a good feature (although getting together in a group can occur too...).