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>If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many people would you have to answer per day? I understand the
by jasode 4y ago
>If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many people would you have to answer per day?
I understand the purpose of your question but it's not constructive to the discussion because you've framed it in terms of not having technical choices to get the response you want. Therefore, the obvious outcome is that people have to have a non-zero amount of answering the phone. Putting constraints on technology (no texting) in a hypothetical question to force people into tautological answers (aha, so you were able to respond to voice calls without bleeding to death which means your feelings are illogical.)
Same idea as interrogating people who don't like boats and ships with "gotcha!" style questions: "But what if airplanes didn't exist and you needed to cross the ocean?" -- Obviously, you'd have unhappy travelers that forced themselves to use ships that didn't want to. People do what they have to do which overrides unpleasant actions.
But the discussion isn't about what people _had_ to do. It's about _preferences_. The blog author eventually called Barclay's bank but he really didn't _want_ to.
A lot of people including many old people before Generation X don't like answering phones. My previous comment about learning that lesson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851
- disruptiveink 4y agoNot exactly. You are correct I was being slightly duplicitous, but the point I was trying to make is the claims of being "flooded" by personal requests for conversation are, in my experience, almost entirely overblown – note that I'm talking personal here, not business/work related. The objections to having conversations with friends always seem to boil down to "I need to focus" and "too many interruptions". When you're an IC being constantly interrupted by meetings, I agree. But to apply the same logic to personal acquaintances and friends? Anecdotally, people who claim they have no time for talking on the phone will have approximately 2-3 friends they talk on a regular (not even daily) basis and spend afternoons binging TV shows. Framing it as a "so much context switching required!" is what's really intellectually dishonest here. Perhaps there's something that is making people anxious or annoyed of talking synchronously with friends over the phone. Sure. But to transpose the work argument doesn't hold water. Also, once again, anecdotally (but I'd love to see studies about this), people who claim they "only operate well asynchronously" will Never. Ever. Reply to text/email.
- bruce343434 4y agoYou seem to imply that interruptions to watching passive entertainment don’t count as interruptions, is this correct and if so, why do you do that?