3 ms·
If I want to talk to Uncle Steve, I don't really care what time it is either here or there, or what it signifies. All I care about is whether we can communicate
by barnacs 10y ago
If I want to talk to Uncle Steve, I don't really care what time it is either here or there, or what it signifies. All I care about is whether we can communicate synchronously at the time or not. If he doesn't want to be disturbed for whatever reason, he can mute/turn off his phone and I can send him an asynchronous message. Problem solved.
- uryga 10y agoIf you care about his availability, I'd say his local time is a pretty good predictor :) I used to like the idea of asynchronous messaging and thought it was the future of telephony/voip. But honestly, async is pretty annoying, because you have to wait ;). I guess what I'm trying to say is, synchronous things are easier for us. It's pretty gard for me to keep track of all the async text conversations I've got going on Facebook. Async is useful for some things, but it makes talking feel like work. I guess CPS-based humans would be more suited for a networked world...
- barnacs 10y agoIf you have to _guess_ someone's availability, then their local time with some knowledge about their lifestyle is probably the best indicator. But technology allows us to communicate at almost light speed, so we don't have to guess anymore. I can just try calling and if it doesn't work out then we can at least use async messages to schedule a syncronous session. Eventually, if it's a regular thing, you will learn when to call for a successful sync session regardless of how we describe time (as long as there is some periodicity to it).
- uryga 10y agoFair. I didn't mean to diss async comms in general - they're still useful. Just took the opportunity to get a few of my thoughts out.
- amptorn 10y ago...Your solution is to just try at random? And if it doesn't work, give up?