Sometimes I Hate Chat!

I discovered yesterday just how limiting a form of communication chat can really be. I stood in front of 20 to 30 politely seated avatars, with a whole raft of microphones connecting me to hundreds of others. The first thing I thought was, it's just as scary to give a virtual speech as it is to give one to a real audience! Then I plowed ahead.

The first part of my speech was already written in text. I had read all of the feedback about the teen grid proposal, and wanted to start by answering the common questions that surfaced through pages of forum-based discourse. So there I was, standing in front of all these people, cut...paste....cut....paste. What a slow and tedious way to communicate!

Then the real fun started. The questions came through slowly, first via IM, then converted to chat; all good ones. I wanted to answer, with confidence, intelligence, thoughtfulness. I wanted to convey that we at Linden Lab see the opening of a Second Life version for teens as being full of potential. Yes, it will have problems, and certainly a lot of care needs to be taken. But we believe that teens will make the most of the creative wonder of Second Life and that in the end it will be worth every effort we have to make.

But I couldn't smile easily. I couldn't speak with the right emphasis. An attempt at humor came across as sarcasm to some. All I could do was type as fast as possible and hope for the best.

I know, because I've seen some early efforts, that some very exciting work is being done to allow avatars to show a range of emotions through body language and facial expressions. But for now I will most likely continue to feel trapped by the limitations of chat, apologizing for misunderstandings and frustrated by the difficulty of expressing what I really feel.

-- Robin Linden

Comments

[Awakening Avatars]

Thank you Robin for your heart felt reflection on what surely must have been a difficult situation!

This is the stuff that binds our amazing community - that those charged with the difficult tasks are also so wonderfully accessible and accountable!

And yes, sometimes what's invisible can be made visible...

:-)

[Strife Onizuka]

I remember rumors of voice chat ages ago. Thinking of becoming a proponent for it? If voice recognition becomes good enough then that could provide your chat logs.

[John Prototype]

Thanks for sharing your frustration and thoughts about this situation.

If it's any consolation, this is a classic problem I've seen time and time again in my own experience with using new IT-based communication mediums. It has to do with how we conceptualize new communication mediums, how we often try to apply unrealistic expectations to them, as well as understanding the basic biological limitations of our own brains when it comes to communicating.

As human beings, we are capable of communicating in two basic ways...synchronously and asynchronously. In an asynchronous environment, we can process many different things at the same time. We can pick and choose what we want to say and spend a long time in coming up with thoughtful responses. This is why technology like online bulletin boards works very well when discussing complex concepts and ideas.

In a synchronous environment, we run into serious issues regarding our own biology. In a synchronous interaction between people, other communication "cues" become critical. Speed of response, body language, social proxemics...they all play a big role in how we interpret things. We also are seriously limited in how many simultaneous conversations we can process concurrently in real-time. As human beings, we are "designed" to be able to communicate synchronously in small groups (5-10 people). We are incapable of handling anything involving more than that.

I think the basic concept of a "town meeting" where an individual is trying to concurrently interact with hundreds of people is unrealistic. People will feel unintentionally feel slighted ("how come she didn't answer me right away?")....important cues such as social proxemics go out the window ("I'm sitting way here in the back...can she even see me?")...and when you try to process too many multiple conversations in real-time it's inevitable that you'll stumble verbally.

Successful real-time "chats" using Second Life or other means (instant messaging, multiuser chatrooms) are possible. We've all had them. Sitting in SL around a campfire with a small group of friends. Chatting via AIM with friends and loved ones. But those situations simply don't "scale" beyond at most 5-10 people at a time. If you feel like you are "typing as fast as you can"...well, then the system has broken down. Not a failure on your part, but a failure of an unrealistic attempt to scale the system.

I think having Town Meetings in the current model is doomed to fail. Citizens will feel alienated and unsatisfied, and Lindens will feel frustrated and overextended. A more distributed system, where people are in small groups communicating synchronously combined with an asynchronous component, would make more sense to me.

IT-based communication tools are just tools. The trick is to figure out how to use them to augment our own biological skills and limitations at communicating. Given the skills, creativity, and motivation of everyone in SL (both citizens and Lindens), I think it's definitely doable. :)

-John

[Moleculor Satyr]

I have to agree with John P. Wholeheartedly.

[Olmy Seraph]

Hi Robin. I missed your town hall live, but I read the transcript and it seemed fine to me. But I agree that what you went through is no fun and can be very hard to do well. I think you were at the quilt unveiling when I "said a few words" to the assembled residents. It was hard! I've done a fair amount of speaking to crowds in RL, and this was much harder for me.

I think the "typing as fast as you can" phenomenon has to do with timing. I kept wanting to say things that took a good while to type, but not wanting people to think I wasn't engaged or responding. Air typing only conveys so much... Plus I kept forgetting to shout, and was worried people were missing what I was saying.

When I chat with friends in small groups it's a lot easier because there is a certain pace to the interaction. Speaking to a crowd the only pace is my own. And speaking in RL, you get instant feedback - you can see and hear people react. They can interrupt to disaggree or ask questions, and when they don't you take that as implicit approval or acceptance. That feedback doesn't exist in SL, and it should in some way.

Perhaps there needs to be a public address mode for chat in SL, that helps deal with some of the issues with public speaking in a virtual environment. Perhaps words could appear as you type, rather than waiting for the RETURN key. And there could be a way for people in the audience to LISTEN to the speaker so they can hear from farther away, or so that their comments are automatically whispered so only their friends next to them can hear thier snideband comments, or so the speaker is at least aware of their attention. Just tossing out some ideas.

Voice chat may have potential, but I think it would bring as many problems as it solves, if not more. Like, can I get a voice synth to modify my speaking voice so I don't always sound just lik me? I can change how my av looks and moves, so I should get that with how he speaks too. Etc, etc.

And I agree with John's comment about the current arrangement for Town Halls being doomed to fail. I actually prefer being in a remote location with a repeater, listening in with a group of friends, chatting among ourselves about what we are hearing. I love that the repeaters look like old-fashioned radios, as that's what the set-up reminds me of. Perhaps instead of town hall format, you should consider more of a radio call-in talk show format; with the repeaters it's almost that way now. That would also help to end the favoritism that only a small number of the elite get to attend the town hall "in person" - that has always ticked me off.

[Jeri Zuma]

Great posts, and a great heartfelt blog entry, Robin... John's post is fantastic... there is the problem of addressing a large group, where chat is the way to go. Even though voice would be cool, it has major limitations. .. If people type over eachother, you can at least go back a little in History and sort it out.. People yelling over a voice linkup, and stepping on each other verbally would be very hard to sort out. Maybe the Lindens should be working on speech *synthesis* rather than just a VOIP voice channel. With speech synthesis, the daunting problem of voice-to-text translation would be removed. So, ....... are we getting speech synthesis anythime soon?

[unhygienix]

I think that this would be a great opportunity to make use of streaming net-radio. Any interested landowners could change their parcels to stream from the Linden broadcast, and probably the Lindens could come up with a way to instantly change the settings on all Linden-owned land to also broadcast the same stream. Whether people gather together in groups or just stop where they are and listen in, it's a great way to easily involve the entire community; or at least whoever has an active interest in SL affairs. As an aside, the broadcast can be saved, and put on a repeat pattern to stream in several public parcel areas, so that residents can hear it if they missed the initial meeting.

Again, this type of communication has the same weaknesses; if the person(s) speaking at the town meeting aren't as good speakers as they are a writer; an attempted joke could still be taken wrongly; their ability to respond is still based off being able to field multiple lines of questioning on their feet. Ultimately though, assuming that Robin or Philip are comfortable enough to broadcast their voices, I think that vocal communication would be much faster and more fluid than typed; especially given the time constraints of the planned event; their meetings, their other work concerns, their personal lives.

[skeith millions]

there is a program designed for SL called sexy-talk. its free to download for now. it uses almost no resources and its easy to understand. where working on making it better everyday. goto www.sexy-talk.org to download it. since its not hugely popular yet we usually hang out in either the club xxx channel or club star channel.

[Morgaine Dinova]

Here's one simple way of increasing avatar expressiveness during presentations:

Create an animation multi-selector object, so that it becomes trivial to kick off a large range of different animations and poses with single clicks rapidly throughout a talk without the hassle of finding them in inventory.

We can do this in-game with existing facilities, but it's a pity we can't create UI panels for this instead. I'd love to create an anim dock and attach it down one side of the screen. And it's not just for classes and discussions --- imagine how useful this would be for SL theatre!

XML'ify the UI, fully -- so many benefits would result!

(Or open the source so we can do it for you.)

There is however one fly in the ointment. The av face in SL needs to have a ton of extra programmable "muscles" to support social expression. We're not there yet so we're limited to whole-body expression.

[Nashville Rambler]

You *should* be able to easily, *and* emphasize your words. *I* can, and I'm just a *newbie* in SL, hehe, lol, LOL, ROFL!, as a few examples :-)
:-)

[Nashville Rambler]

I wish there were a way to edit posts here. Then I could correct my post by changing
"You should be able to easily *and*..."
to
You should be able to /smile\ easily *and*..."
\ /

/me wonders what's up with the right and left angle brackets