Thing 8 - Communication

Not being a Neflin member, this is even more nebulous! I used to use IM's on a regular basis as a member of AOL. So I just tried to figure out how to use it on Windows Live since I use hotmail--and I think I sent invitations to all 193 people on my email list! Now I'm just a pain in the butt! On AOL a person didn't have to sign up to see the service (at least that's not my memory of it). And now there are so many different IM servcies it isn't clear which one you would perfer or why and it would seem you'd have to keep up with several since your friends are probably on many different sites.

I definitely see the value of all the discussions about IMs. They would be worthwhile in certain cases--work groups, even family members when they are online to communicate in real time. But they also can just lead to idle chatter among people.

This seems to be a world of redundancy--and also you could wind up spending more time sitting in front of a computer than talking with people in person (how many times do you see someone ignoring the person they are with in a restaurant and instead chat with someone on the phone or text away!). Also, in the texting world you not only pay for text messages you send but there's also a charge to the receiver--who may not be able to afford all those text messages! Our school "security notification system" seemed to use that system to send text messages from third parties, thereby having the receivers incur charges and advertisements they were not interested in. So there's alot of potential misuse of all these services!