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No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

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Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#21

Post by ergothus »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

Tl;DR: the decline in long-form text communication is not (necessarily) because people are too lazy to write long-form. They may just be recognizing the futility.

My attempts to use clear and precise longer-form text generally fail to achieve my goal, and readers will respond in ways that the text anticipated and answered, but they didn't read or didn't comprehend the points.

Given a sentence at a time, with 5 or fewer sentences, comprehension improves, though I still have to repeat points and correct wrong conclusions. I've seen this lack of attention/comprehension with the text of others, both as reader and as outside observer, so I know the confusion is not just poor writing on my part.

You have to compare the efficiency/accuracy by results, not against some logical but unrealistic ideal.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#22

Post by pgodzin »

You can easily opt-out of the auto-complete feature and if it being your own words with your own personality is important to you, then you likely will actually type them rather than autocomplete to the close-enough response Google suggested.

Seems like plenty of people are happy with this trade-off, and that's who the feature is for.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#23

Post by organicmultiloc »

Google's contempt for all humans that aren't executives at Google has always been baffling to me.

If I call a company and can't reach a human within about 90 seconds I don't do business with that company. End of discussion dot period.

I'm sure Google has decided that only 5% of people are like that and therefore I don't exist but they are completely wrong. Sooner or later the ad gravy train will run out and they will have to reevaluate this statistical arrogance style of business management.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#24

Post by stcredzero »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit.

Really? I see a flourishing of detailed video content, much of which is interesting and fairly information dense.

Examples:

Civilizations at the End of Time: Black Hole Farming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ

CGP Grey. Rules for Rulers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Granted, that these are really pointers to other sources, in many cases text sources.

Cost/Benefit is a big factor! Remember: The street finds its own uses for things.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#25

Post by sandworm101 »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

So too has the art of cave painting. We forget that the style and substance of a communication is more often an outcome of the medium than anything else. Letters were long because they needed to be. Postcards were shorter. And in Britain, during the days of multiple mail deliveries, letters too were very short. Emails and IMs are short because they also need to be short.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#26

Post by sowbug »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

The length of a single piece of communication might be a function of bandwidth. If my only way to reach you is by a handwritten letter that must travel by ship across an ocean, I'm probably going to say more than "Yo."

Edit: joshuamorton made the same point while I was working on this comment.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#27

Post by stcredzero »

ergothus wrote: post #21
cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

Tl;DR: the decline in long-form text communication is not (necessarily) because people are too lazy to write long-form. They may just be recognizing the futility. My attempts to use clear and precise longer-form text generally fail to achieve my goal, and readers will respond in ways that the text anticipated and answered, but they didn't read or didn't comprehend the points. Given a sentence at a time, with 5 or few…

I've seen this lack of attention/comprehension with the text of others, both as reader and as outside observer, so I know the confusion is not just poor writing on my part.

My wife works in banking, and she's discovered that she has a superpower: She can read large amounts of dense text quickly and comprehend it. Yes, her superpower is reading! Incredible as it sounds, there are lots of C-level people in her field who basically never get past light reading. So basically, she's become an overnight expert/resource to senior people.

Is this a sign of the degradation of our society, or has it always been this way? I suspect it's actually the latter.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#28

Post by fortythirteen »

"Let us tell you what's newsworthy and what isn't."

"Let us direct your searches through filtered autocomplete and 'curate' your search results."

"Let us filter out any 'controversial' content, so you won't have to question y(our) worldview."

"Let us make phone calls for you, so you don't have to maintain social skills by interacting with other humans."

"Let us finish your thoughts for you, because, by this point, you don't have any of your own."

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#29

Post by ocdtrekkie »

pgodzin wrote: post #22

You can easily opt-out of the auto-complete feature and if it being your own words with your own personality is important to you, then you likely will actually type them rather than autocomplete to the close-enough response Google suggested. Seems like plenty of people are happy with this trade-off, and that's who the feature is for.

The problem is it affects two way communication. You might be okay with the trade off, I am not. But you may subject me to it.

While a few niche businesses will make news stating they'll reject robo call based appointment scheduling because they care about their actual human employees, most will just accept it. The employees won't have a choice and will just be subjected to this.

Same for email. I want to hear from people, not Google. I'm perfectly content just purging people out of my contacts who let Google do the talking.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#30

Post by d1zzy »

viridian wrote: post #7

I find myself surprisingly agreeing with this article. The "everyone's voice begins to sound the same" aspect of it is something I hadn't even considered, and does feel a little bit unnerving to me. Maybe unnerving isn't even the right word, but I can't think of a more appropriate one. Luckily though, soon I'll be able to ask google for the correct one.

Considering that everyone's text forms a unique signature given a couple of sentences, having the option (nobody is forcing you to use it) to have a bot compose emails for me seems like a sort of anonymity gain.
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