Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the communication category.
How can you judge the ‘tone’ of an email?
A very interesting article on how easy it is to misinterpret the 'tone' of emails, causing unecessary flame-wars, family fallings-out, and even litigation.
Apparently most people _estimate_ that they 'get it right' around 80 percent of the time, that is, that they know what 'tone' an email is meant to convey four times out of five.
However, in an admittedly smallish study (**) , people were getting it right (that is, guessing the same 'tone' as that in the stated intention of the writer) about 50 percent of the time – no better than chance really!
Could explain a few things…
I use smiley's a _lot_ in my emails – I wonder if this makes it better or worse. Some people could interpret 🙂 to be a sarcastic sort of a grin I spose. Hmmmmm.
(**) N. Epley, J. Kruger, http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
“Whats on your virtual coffee table” (from ‘Creating Passionate Users’ blog’)
What’s on your virtual coffee-table?
Bloggers photograph books they are currently reading or like to ‘have around for inspiration’
Guido on “The Humane Interface”
The Humane Interface
Guido van rossum reviews Jef Raskin’s The Humane Interface and generally discusses interface design.
An Illustrated Guide to Cryptographic Hashes
An Illustrated Guide to Cryptographic Hashes
http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-crypto-hashes.html
google quote, akashic mail, dead badgers, and einstein – THERE IS NO CAT!
Here is some food for thought 😉
- 1. We all know about gmail. But now I’d like you to think for a moment about a-mail:
- The following excerpted from am email conversation (although not, strictly speaking, one with an unknown and/or unknowable entity):
>a-mail is astral-mail.>
> It is very useful for sending email whilst you are in REM
> sleep. Some experienced meditators also claim to be able to
> use it during slow-wave sleep, but I’ve had no luck with
> this.… have you been a-mailing me porn??
> either invented by a friend of mine or else revealed untoeth
> him via an unknown and/or unknowable akashic source.Unknowable! Ooh! You just triggered a rant!
Short form (which is probably all I have time for 8-/), I believe
nothing is in principle unknowable. (Of course plenty isn’t
currently knowable by me, or by any human, or possibly by any
mind right now, but forever and ever? Seems a rather strong
claim to make.)> You might want to help out the a-mail community by writing a
> transparent, reliable and fast db backend for storage. Or
> not.The akashic record kinda meets the spec already, yes?
Content-addressable, associative, holographic… ahead of
current human state of the art.> pps If still in need of distraction, you could also see
>”how to install linux on a dead badger”(For those of you kiddies out there who might like to try this at home, checkout the excellent user’s guide to this fun project, courtesy of Lucy A. Snyder. It can be found at
- 2. And now think about this:
“Google is Turing’s cathedral, awaiting its soul. We hope. In the words of an unusually perceptive friend: “When I was there, just before the IPO, I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming. Happy Golden Retrievers running in slow motion through water sprinklers on the lawn. People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil would come to earth, what place would be better to hide?” –George Dyson
- 3. And finally, throw the following into the mix: —
“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.” (Albert Einstein)
- 4. Get it now?
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A Coffeehouse Conversation on the Turing Test
A Coffeehouse Conversation on the Turing Test
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