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Personally, I switched to voice messages (via WhatsApp or Slack). It doesn't work for everything, but... if I know this will take me more than a minute to type,

by gajus 4y ago

Personally, I switched to voice messages (via WhatsApp or Slack). It doesn't work for everything, but... if I know this will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a voice message. If it requires visual aid – Loom. The only problem with audio/Loom messages is that it is not easily indexable, but that's a tooling problem that can be easily solved. I rarely use email (I may ask someone to compose an email for me). In this setup, I do see value if I had a Slack bot that I could say to "ask lawyers for an update on X". But even then, people would immediately know that the email came not from "me"... Personally, I'd like to see more tooling around * using AI to auto-polish video/audio communication, e.g. remove long pauses, skip filler words, etc. * summarizing video/audio/text communication into bullet points of intel and actions

gajus 4y ago
I think the future of work communication is going to be something similar to what these guys are doing https://www.volleyapp.com/ https://www.volleyapp.com/ I don't Volley is there yet (or even close), but the concept is on the right path: async video/audio/3D stitched into a coherent narrative thanks to AI. Input and high quality audio is the biggest barrier at the moment. When I say input, I mean that we need something similar to sousveillance tech that can contribute to conversation without me actively switching context. Just like we would in a real-world conversation. When I say audio, I mean that no one wants to listen poorly articulated voice messages that are hard to follow. We need tech that can make each of us sound smart. It will happen. Few interesting startups in this space.
marssaxman 4y ago
> if I know this will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a voice message. I'm glad you and I do not try to correspond!
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  Same here. Audio messages are easy to create for the sender but a nightmare to parse for the receiver. Whenever I receive an audio message I automatically tend to assume that the sender thinks of their time as more valuable than the receiver, which is acceptable in some cases (from busy PhD advisor to advisee) but I find unacceptable in other cases, for example in peer-to-peer communication.
  - gajus 4y ago
    That view that you are describing is completely culture dependent though. The opposite is true in Asia.
    - marssaxman 4y ago
      I've never heard of that before. Could you describe how it works?
      - gajus 4y ago
        A search of "voice messaging culture in asia" surfaces quite a few articles on the subject. But the gist is that vast majority of your every day communication with someone is going to be an exchange of short voice messages rather than text messages, both in work and personal context. This includes planning to meet someone, ordering food, "catching up", discussing a meeting, etc. Receiving a long text would not be necessarily rude, but unusual.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  +1 but the sad part is that this is trivial to fix with Whisper yet I'm not seeing the integrations in popular messaging apps. just put the text blurb in there automatically already!
  - gajus 4y ago
    Whisper is still cost prohibitive at scale.
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
      I thought it ran locally? You mean just the raw processing cost? Ya ok i can see that.
stavros 4y ago
> if I know this will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a voice message This just shifts the burden from you to the recipient. I don't want to listen to a 1-minute voice message where you pause and try to collect your thoughts, rather than spend two seconds reading two sentences.

by gajus 4y ago

gajus 4y ago

I think the future of work communication is going to be something similar to what these guys are doing https://www.volleyapp.com/ https://www.volleyapp.com/ I don't Volley is there yet (or even close), but the concept is on the right path: async video/audio/3D stitched into a coherent narrative thanks to AI. Input and high quality audio is the biggest barrier at the moment. When I say input, I mean that we need something similar to sousveillance tech that can contribute to conversation without me actively switching context. Just like we would in a real-world conversation. When I say audio, I mean that no one wants to listen poorly articulated voice messages that are hard to follow. We need tech that can make each of us sound smart. It will happen. Few interesting startups in this space.

marssaxman 4y ago

> if I know this will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a voice message. I'm glad you and I do not try to correspond!

polygamous_bat 4y ago
Same here. Audio messages are easy to create for the sender but a nightmare to parse for the receiver. Whenever I receive an audio message I automatically tend to assume that the sender thinks of their time as more valuable than the receiver, which is acceptable in some cases (from busy PhD advisor to advisee) but I find unacceptable in other cases, for example in peer-to-peer communication.
- gajus 4y ago
  That view that you are describing is completely culture dependent though. The opposite is true in Asia.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    I've never heard of that before. Could you describe how it works?
    - gajus 4y ago
      A search of "voice messaging culture in asia" surfaces quite a few articles on the subject. But the gist is that vast majority of your every day communication with someone is going to be an exchange of short voice messages rather than text messages, both in work and personal context. This includes planning to meet someone, ordering food, "catching up", discussing a meeting, etc. Receiving a long text would not be necessarily rude, but unusual.
8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
+1 but the sad part is that this is trivial to fix with Whisper yet I'm not seeing the integrations in popular messaging apps. just put the text blurb in there automatically already!
- gajus 4y ago
  Whisper is still cost prohibitive at scale.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    I thought it ran locally? You mean just the raw processing cost? Ya ok i can see that.

stavros 4y ago

> if I know this will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a voice message This just shifts the burden from you to the recipient. I don't want to listen to a 1-minute voice message where you pause and try to collect your thoughts, rather than spend two seconds reading two sentences.