This is a comment I left on JP Rangaswami’s blog a few minutes ago. He writes a lovely post about Alexander Graham Bell. I read it and thought we need a better way to augment the setting up of voice calls. I don’t see enough focus there. So this is the comment I left.
I love this post too! Although calling someone to “come here” long ago became a joke with me. It reflects an autocratic time when “commands” came via the telephone. That’s one of the issues I still have. I think the receiver should be in control.
That means that our signaling system is no longer quite so appropriate. Yet why make this point? Here on this historical reference. For me it is simple. We still delight in hearing another voice and we often forget how nice it is. Yes it may take our attention away from other activities, yet it is richer, and we get nuances that we will never get in text.
I have an observation coming from your post above. Telephony is increasingly falling to text at a time when a little “talk” could save the world. Our text based gestures are failing us. I might write here that I send every email with an open invite to call me. Yet few ever do. I could add the same thought with this post. So what’s the problem.
Our credentials! If you were to phone me today other than on Skype (for which you would have to get approval) you would probably go to voice mail as an unknown number. There’s also a good chance that it could interrupt me at an in opportune time. Yet more likely I would smile and go “great” and take the call. Because it’s a connection that is a little outside my buddylist. And only voice can close this connection more quickly.
In our focus on trying to make voicify the web we haven’t or aren’t mastering an improvement in the gesture. I think you know I created Phweet. It sends a signal with the context for the call and attaches a Caller ID (some social network profile which I’m happy to use if you are which will broker the identity layer for us).
As a gesture it says… or can be attached in principle to anything I send by text. It’s a an offer to have that “voice” conversation.
Ringing out of the blue is basically dead. It appears. Yes the gesture of “I want to call you / I want to talk to you / Let’s have a conversation” has never been bigger or more important. With such a move to text we need to bring more personality in before the call. Again approaches that give a rich callerID and context before the call without crashing the gates or providing unwanted interruptions is the way forward.
That’s why we got excited when we started sharing live telephone records. Stuart is talking to David etc in Twitter. Thus opening up voice conversations in real-time. For those outside the buddylist, or those that perhaps you don’t want to share all your channels with its a worthy solution. More importantly you can blow up the exchange after the call. I bet Alexander Graham Bell never thought of that!
