Omnisynchronous Communication

Posted by Kiley Dorton in Blog, Favorites, Ideas

Too much of a good thing: here’s an idea to curb our communication overload. It started off with a phone number–everybody had one. Great, right? Timmy could call the fire department to let them know that Lassie had discovered a burning building down the street.

With instantaneous communication came innumerable advancements and improvements in the way we interact. With a nod to Dr. Shamp of the UGA New Media Institute, I’m going to call things like phone calls and video chats “synchronous communications.” You can contrast synchronous communications with asynchronous communications, which includes things like sending snail mail. Synchronous counts as anything that you have to actively respond to and interact with to continue to the conversation, and (of course) asynchronous is just the opposite: communications that are directed at you specifically but are passive in that you can let them sit for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months before responding and it will not affect the conversation or medium.

Before the turn of the millenium, communication was pretty straightforward. People sent letters every now and then, business people used email and fax regularly, a growing number of people had cell phones, and everyone had a hard phone line at home and at work.

Soon after I got my first cell phone (2001) arose the widespread use of a feature on many of our first cell phones: SMS. Text messaging spread like wildfire even though it was more of an afterthought feature than anything else. I used it constantly, and I do mean constantly, for many years. For example, in high school, while I sent and received thousands of text messages a month I only actually talked on the phone for a few hundred minutes. Text messages took the place of passing and leaving notes, which was the most common form of communication for me in middle school. That and passing a TI-83+ back and forth with the alpha lock turned on (I see you rolling your eyes).

Despite the fact that email was around and I did have a few email addresses (@aol.com), nobody *I* interacted with really used email until I got to college (2004). To show this point, I never once received an email from a teacher, school, or educational organization until I got my acceptance email from UGA. When I was assigned an email address with @uga.edu at the end of it, I knew that email would soon be a major form of communication for me.

Of course, another major communication platform hit the scene in 2004. Facebook came to UGA in the fall of 2004, which happened to be my freshman year. I remember going down to the computer lab in my dorm and signing up for Facebook with my exclusive access, allotted to me by my ownership of an @uga.edu email address. I told all of my hall mates about it and made them all sign up. As I recall, there were no “walls” and no “news feed.” There wasn’t even a “like” button. You couldn’t post pictures to albums, because there were no albums. There was simply a profile with some information on it, and below your name it would show you if the person was “online now” or not. Very cool stuff.

Facebook evolved, as we all know, for better or worse. Now we have Facebook messages (asynchronous) and Facebook chat (synchronous). We also have posts on each other’s Timelines/Walls (asynchronous in nature but synchronous in functionality) and notifications of activity. But now you can tag people in posts on your own Timeline, and it is kinda/sorta directed at the person you tagged (asynchronous?). Facebook as a communication platform, and Twitter for that matter, is blending the lines between asynchronous and synchronous communications. The fact the vast majority of people my age check Facebook on their phones FIRST THING when they wake up means that not only is it synchronous, it’s constantly on, always present. Dr. Shamp, I’m going to call that “omnisynchronous.” TM.

So here’s the problem: we have so many different ways to communicate with one another that it’s difficult to know the best way to reach any one person at any given time (let alone a group of people), and the content of whatever you need to say to them also plays into the medium you ought to use.

Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a simplified, consolidated communication platform that aggregated all forms of incoming messages and allowed you to react and respond to them in a logical, natural, and streamlined fashion? In essence, wouldn’t it be cool if all of your communication could be “omnisynchronous?”

Yes, I do mean all forms of incoming communication. For this platform to work, you would have to have complete trust that it would capture everything that people were attempting to send to you, from phone calls to Facebook chats. Emails would be captured, summarized, and placed in the queue. So would text messages, Facebook messages, Twitter @replies, and even snail mail letters. Every form of incoming communication would be captured, categorized, and presented to you on one simplified interface, regardless of whether it was synchronous, asynchronous, or a blend of the two.

From inside the interface you would find a world of simplicity and action. Filters would run the show, allowing you to sort by filters like “urgency” or its sister “importance.” You could sort by “most commonly contacted” or “work” or “friends”. You could even sort by medium such as “Facebook” or “email.”

Responding would also be streamlined, allowing you to choose from a short but powerful list of common responses. These would be completely untouchable, so that everyone using the service and receiving your response would understand that you did not tailor the response nor were you expected or even able to. That’s very important, the fact that you CANNOT alter simple responses relieves the societal communication pressure of tailoring each and every response For example, if someone sent you a text that said, “Are you free for dinner tonight” you would be presented with the following options: “Available” / “Not Available” / “More Information Needed” / “Comment: ” and if you click comment then you can type a custom response.

The buttons allow a common language of action, rather than adhering to the time consuming constructs of grammar, syntax, expectations, and even politeness.

Another example: if your boss sends you an email that is 4 paragraphs long but ultimately asks “Are you finished with your project” then you would be presented with a dynamically different menu of responses, including “Complete” or “In-Progress” or “Reassigned”.

Choosing the option is all you have to do. Just read the summary or the full message and then tap the appropriate button that embodies your desired response. The platform would then take your choice and craft it into a polite, direct, and consistent response that uses the same medium the person used to get in touch with you. If it was originally an email, the platform emails the person back. If it was a text message, the platform texts the person. Etc.

This streamlined communication platform would therefore not REPLACE any of our beloved comm systems, it would augment them so that we can be confident that we are receiving all of our incoming messages and would allow us to respond to a greatly increased volume of communication without spending a great amount of time doing so. Of course you could still talk to people on the phone, post on people’s Facebook Timeline, or send an email to your coworker. The difference is in YOUR incoming communication.

Many mobile operating systems have attempted to make this happen. The iPhone’s notification pull-down menu, Android’s notification system, and Window’s tile-based, live-updating feeds.

But they are missing key features: consolidation of all media and systematic, automated response structures to name a few. The next evolution of communication needs to include a function that relates actions, answers, replies, and responses in a way that does not require custom typed content. Custom written content should be reserved for creative writing, love letters, news writers, etc. Not for interoffice communication and “meet me at the mall” text messages.

Anyway, I wrote all this because I’m so fed up with getting incoming messages in 15,000 different mediums and formats, and not feeling that I can adequately keep up with everyone. That being said, I probably should have used this time to take a chunk out of my ever-present unread email count…