5. The mobility of electronic digital data
“Advanced Internet communicators always think about the ways in which their own exploitation of the technological ease of mobile data can impact on other Internet users, seeking to ensure that technical possibility is not simply substituted for effective communication requirements.” (Allen, n.d.)
There is no doubting that the use of email has dramatically increased the ease and speed with which we can communicate and share information with one another, and it continues to play an increasing role in our day to day lives. However, misuse and misunderstanding of the process of sending and receiving email continues to result in negative experiences for email users, ranging from mild annoyance through to personal and professional harm or damage.
“In a world where personal missives can instantly tour the globe with a click of the “send” or “forward” button, others have suffered far greater consequences. When they get into the wrong hands, indiscreet e-mails can cost people jobs, clients, business deals, even marriages.” (The Grapevine, n.d.)
An excellent example that highlights the manor in which email communication is able to multiply and expand, is through the use of email petitions. There has been much conjecture regarding the effectiveness (or otherwise) of email petitions, many people considering their use to be a form of spam mail. Regardless of this, email petitions are illustrative of the rate in which an email is able to multiply and expand from one user to another.
Assume that an email petition is sent to 5 people, and each person who receives this petition forwards it to another five people. This email travels from user to user, expanding at an exponential rate, as is detailed below:
1 person sends to 5 people: total number of recipients = 5
5 people send to 5 people each: total number of recipients = 25
25 x 5 = 125
125 x 5 = 625
625 x 5 = 3,125
3,125 x 5 = 15,625
15,625 x 5 = 78,125
78,125 x 5 = 390,625
390,625 x 5 = 1,953,125
1,958,125 x 5 = 9,765,625
- figures from Knowledge Hound: Why Email Petitions Do More Harm Than Good (n.d.)
The example above shows that an email that follows this trend is able to, within a relatively short period of time, reach the inbox of almost 10 million people.
Continuing to use the example of the email petition, now also consider that each person that signs their name to the list also includes their email address (which would normally be the case in these electronic petitions). When a person further down the chain of communication receives this email, they instantly have access to the email addresses of all the people who signed the petition before them, opening up new and previously non-existent relationships between users.
This is not only the case with electronic petitions, but the same principal applies to all email that has been forwarded from one recipient to another, with the contact details of all previous addressees still included within the body of the communication.
There are many sources on the internet that suggest appropriate standards for the correct use of email forwarding and other such issues pertaining to netiquette, and many of these recommend that you should not forward on information without the permission of the author of the original message. For example:
“Too often confidential information has gone global because of someone’s lack of judgment. Unless you are asked or request permission, do not forward anything that was sent just to you.” (Ramsey, n.d.)
However, it is even more common for articles relating to email etiquette to advise that an email should only be forwarded to multiple recipients by employing the use of the “bcc” field, ensuring that the email addresses of the recipients are concealed from each other. In her article “Irresponsible Forwarders Exposed!”, Judith Kallos goes one step further by suggesting that:
“Before you forward any previously forwarded email, you need to also take the time to remove/edit any email addresses of those you don’t know before you forward the message along. Look in the body of the message for the forwards that contain addresses and remove those addresses from your forward! Just because the person who forwarded to you was indiscreet and did not respect other’s privacy does not mean you behave in the same manner. If you cannot take a moment to remove the visible email addresses in the body of a message before forwarding it on, then you should not forward at all!” (Kallos, n.d.)
Regardless of the method used, it is nevertheless important to be aware of the exact nature of the information that is being forwarded within each email, and the possible consequences of doing so.
Site 1:
Title: Email RepliesUnknown (n.d.)
Retrieved 27th July 2008,
http://www.emailreplies.com/
Evaluation:
A comprehensive and thorough guide to various aspects netiquette as it pertains to email. This site is particularly focused on the effective use of email within a business setting, but many of the tips and suggestions apply equally to personal forms of communication. Many of the points detailed on this website are generally accepted as netiquette standards, and common amongst this type of site. However, there are also many less obvious examples of thoughtful and effective email use. Other sections of this website contain suggestions for drafting and enforcing business email policies.
Site 2:
Title: Inappropriate Use of E-Mail and the Internet in the Workplace: The Arbitration PictureLichtash, A (2004)
Retrieved 27th July 2008,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3923/is_200402/ai_n9392244/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
Evaluation:
This extensive and comprehensive article details many cases involving the inappropriate use of email and the internet in the workplace, and the consequences of such action in the form of disciplinary procedures or termination of employment. In relation to the mobility of data, there are may issues contained within the article involving the forwarding of inappropriate or offensive material, which has lead to the need for external mediation or arbitration. The cases reviewed in the article are issues that have occurred in the United States of America, and as such the laws that apply to such issues may not be the same as in Australia. However, the information contained in the article is certainly an eye-opener to the potential repercussions of inappropriate internet use.
9. Permanent ephemerality
“Advanced Internet users do not confuse the electronically generated ‘ephemerality’ of their communication with a real emphemerality: they take seriously the requirement to communicate with clear vision of the consequences of what they are doing.” (Allen, n.d.)
There is a common perception amongst internet users that email is transitory in nature and should not be considered a lasting record of information. Websites on the other hand, are seen to be static and perceived as a continuing and permanent record of data.
However, neither of these assumptions are correct.
Information on servers is backed up on a regular basis, and it is possible that email messages that have been long since deleted from the inbox of the recipient are stored and archived for possible future uses. These stored emails can and have been accessed and used in many court cases, highlighting that the supposed ephemerality of email is an illusion. In fact, the deletion of email records by a company can be considered as suspicious activity, indicating an attempt to conceal or destroy information (Stanfield, 2007)
Electronic data has also become increasingly easy to store, and as such information that has been emailed can be saved in email folder storage systems, both as a sent and received item, for many years after the original communication.
Websites on the other hand, give the impression that they are a fixed, static, and permanent record of a particular set of information. In actual fact web pages and entire websites are altered, or even deleted entirely, on a regular basis.
The amendment of information or removal of web pages may in some instances have very little impact within the confines of an individual website, however the ability to be able to create links from one site to another is the cornerstone of the internet, and removing a page from a website will quite often result in a user receiving a “404″ or “Not Found” error when following a hyper link to that page. This occurrence has become known as “link rot”.
“…linkrot contributes to dissolving the very fabric of the Web: there is a looming danger that the Web will stop being an interconnected universal hypertext and turn into a set of isolated info-islands. Anything that reduces the prevalence and usefulness of cross-site linking is a direct attack on the founding principle of the Web.” (Neilsen, 1998)
Due to the amount of information that is lost from websites, there are a number of initiatives being undertaken in an attempt to store and archive “snapshots” of webpages and record them for future reference. To date, the largest amount of this information has been recorded by the Internet Archive, although there are also many other archiving projects in existence, including the National Library of Australia’s Pandora Archive.
However, there are many problems associated with this kind of record keeping. These problems include:
- Scale. The expansive amount of information that is published on the internet is prohibitive to comprehensive archiving.
- Omission. As all data cannot be recorded, how is the decision made as to which information is archived?
- Copyright. A large amount of the information on the internet is copyrighted or otherwise sensitive. Does the archive have permission to duplicate and distribute this information?
- Objection. Is an individual able to request information regarding themselves or the content of their website to be removed from the archive?
Perhaps emails are considered as ephemeral because they are something that is sent and received, an item that moves from place to place. On the other hand a website may be considered more reliable due to the fact that they exist in a fixed location, and is something that you go to, rather than wait for it to come to you. If this is the case, this misconception regarding the nature of electronic communication is an undoubtedly an attempt of the human users to make sense of these relatively new methods of information exchange.
Site 1:
Title: Internet Archive
Retrieved 29th July 2008,
http://www.archive.org
Evaluation:
The amount of information and electronic data that has been collected by the Internet Archive is truly impressive. The collection includes everything from entire scientific journals from the nineteenth century to a catalogue of 1950’s and 60’s drive-in theatre advertising. However, when viewing this site, the most striking impression was made by the obvious limitations of such an ambitious undertaking. Although there is a lot of content, I found that locating specific information was difficult and restrictive. This was not assisted by such fundamental errors as misspelt keywords (for example, “Sidney” instead of “Sydney”). There also appears to be very little judgement made in regard to the quality of the information archived. Use of the archive may be time consuming, but could also be rewarding.
Site 2:
Title: W3C Link Checker
Retrieved 29th July 2008,
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
Evaluation:
Due to poor user experiences caused by linkrot, there are now a number of commercial link checking software packages available for purchase, to suit a range of requirements and price ranges. However, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) offers a free link validating service on its website that is both thorough and easy to use. Not only does the W3C link checker advise of broken links, but it also suggests the action that may be required to repair the incorrect coding of links on a webpage. Although useful when used to check a small number of pages, I suspect a commercial package would be more appropriate for larger websites.
9. Communication and Information are related
“Advanced Internet users actively create new contexts for the information that they receive as part of asynchronous communication (and other forms), and then give those contexts form and utility through mechanisms such as email folder filing systems; automated processes; etc.” (Allen, n.d.)
Information that is distributed via email is generally sorted by date received as the default method of organising data; however this system is only really useful as a short term method of information storage. This is due to the fact that after an extended period of time, it is not always possible to remember when an email was received as easily as it is to recall what the email was about. In a situation such as this, a structure or framework within a user’s email program, based on subject rather than time, can be constructed as a filing system in which to store information, so that individual emails can be located with ease as the need arises.
“Email has become one of the most popular communication mediums for its ease of use and almost instantaneous delivery. The rapid growth of email has lead to a new phenomenon: email glut. You can easily become overloaded with information and not be able to find any of it. The medium that was supposed to make you more efficient and save time can turn against you if you don’t manage it effectively.” (Di Giacomo, 2006)
There are any number of methods that can be effectively employed to organise information for future use, and these vary across differing email programs and applications. The most common form of email organisational tool is the email folder filing system, whereby a user can create folders and store information according to personally determined criteria, such as subjects or groups. However there are also other methods of organising this information such as annotations, flags, and colour categories. By defining this meta-data, the user is creating their own context for the information, and storing their data in a manner that builds personal significance and meaning to their material.
In some email applications it is possible to create rules that automatically determine the method in which emails are handled upon receipt. The most familiar example of this is the spam filter, which automatically redirects suspicious mail to a “junk” folder. However, it is also possible for the user to define other mail handling rules that can, for example, re-route email from a particular sender to a folder other than the inbox. Another common example is the instruction that can be given to your email program that will entirely block email that is sent from a particular address or domain.
With the advent and proliferation of Web 2.0 applications (such as Flickr or del.icio.us), it has become increasingly possible to annotate and categorise information with the use of “tags”. Tagging websites, blogs, images and other files introduces another level of user defined meta-data that can be implemented to filter an information set for ease of retrieval.
“The value in this external tagging is derived from people using their own vocabulary and adding explicit meaning, which may come from inferred understanding of the information/object. People are not so much categorizing, as providing a means to connect items (placing hooks) to provide their meaning in their own understanding.” (Vander Wal, 2007)
Prior to 2000, entries made in blogs only appeared in reverse chronological order, which meant that older information was difficult to locate in much the same way as is the case with a poorly organised email filing systems. However, with the introduction of permalinks, each entry made in a blog can now also retain a permanent address. This not only meant that individual entries could be linked to from an external location, but it also resulted in tagging systems that could be used to filter entries on a number of criteria that not only included date posted, but also subject qualifiers or categories. This is another example of the way that information can be organised via the use of meta-data or user defined contextualisation.
The popularity of tagging has also lead to this method of organisation being employed at an operating system level, with limited tagging functionality being included in Windows Vista, and applications for Mac OS X such as Quicksilver, that allow contextual meta-data to be added to files that are saved on a local computer’s hard drive.
Site 1:
Title: 43 Folders: Inbox Zero
Retrieved 3rd August 2008,
http://www.43folders.com/izero
Evaluation:
Inbox Zero is part of Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders website that focuses on an efficient methodology by which to better manage email. The guidelines offered by Mann are designed to assist in reducing information overload caused by poorly executed email practices, and offers recommendations on improving time management skills. Included in his posts are suggestions on appropriate ways in which to use email automation features to eliminate interruptions caused by “noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items”. Interestingly, Mann also suggests that maintaining an email folder storage system with hierarchy of folders is an inefficient use of time and that all emails that are to be saved should be put in a single file called “Archive”, and relocated using searching tools.
Site 2:
Title: Del.icio.us
Retrieved 3rd August 2008,
http://del.icio.us
Evaluation:
There are currently a number of shared bookmarking services available on the internet, but it was del.icio.us that pioneered the use of tagging, and originally coined the phrase “social bookmarking” (Wikipedia.org, “Social Bookmarking”). Internet web addresses can be saved in a similar fashion to traditional browser based “favourites” folders, however sites can be annotated and referenced with user-defined meta-data, forming an organisational structure that can be filtered and searched. Bookmarks can also be accessed from multiple computers and shared between users. Installing tagging buttons onto internet browsers is quick and easy, and the application is relatively simple to use.
33. Information and attention
In the era of the ‘attention economy’, readers and users of Internet information must be carefully craft, in their own minds, the kind of metadata which will – almost instinctively – ‘fit’ with the metadata of the information sources they want, so that – in the few brief moments of initial exchange, when a seeker of information encounters information being sought, rapid, effective judgments are made that ‘pay off’ in terms of further reading, accessing and saving. (Allen, n.d.)
The rapid development of information technology, especially in regards to the internet and the World Wide Web, has brought about a cultural and economic shift in focus away from the production of goods, in favour of the handling and dissemination of information. The “Information Revolution” as it has been called, on the one hand has made available to the internet user vast amounts of data, both easily and rapidly, but on the other hand has brought about a type of information overload which can result in either alienating or boring the end user.
In 1971, Herbert Simon wrote:
“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a death of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41).
This idea forms the basis for the principal of Attention Economics. That is, that the time and attention of an individual are valuable commodities in an environment crowded with competing interests. A company or institution that has the attention of an individual is then able to, in varying degrees, influence the actions of that person. Conversely, it can be said that if a company does not hold the attention of an individual, then the individual will not be inclined to act in a manner that the company would decree as beneficial to their interests.
This is most obvious in the realms of sales and marketing. In order for a provider of goods or services to make a sale, they first must make the consumer aware of the product that they are offering. Without the customer’s attention, the provider cannot expect to generate sales, and hence invests in advertising through which to gain this attention.
The same theory applies in regard to the distribution of information via the internet. In order for an individual to consume and use information, they must first be able to locate it. There are many methods that the producer of information has available in order to attract the attention of individual users, including email newsletters, banner advertising, search engine page ranking, or even spam mail.
Material that is difficult to read or interpret is likely to rapidly lose the interest of the reader, resulting in the user attempting to locate their desired information from an alternate source. It is also important that information is presented to users in a manner that is technologically accessible to them. For example, users with dial up internet connections will not favour websites with large amounts of multimedia content, as this can be time consuming and expensive to download.
There has been much research and investigation into the most effective methods to communicate information via the internet, including website design and usability, and it has been noted that reading and effectively processing information via a computer screen is more difficult than it is through other mediums. In most cases this ultimately results in users scanning information rather than reading it verbatim (as explained by Nielsen, 1997).
However the burden of responsibility for information management and retrieval does not solely rest on the shoulders on information providers. There must be an onus placed on the user to be precise in regards to the nature of the information that they are seeking, and use effective search techniques (such as Boolean logic) and practical internet methodology.
Site 1:
Title: Searching Spot
Retrieved 4th August 2008,
http://www.searchingspot.com/
Evaluation:
The Searching Spot website is an introduction to advanced internet search techniques with the aim of assisting users locate specific information more rapidly. Included in the website is a general overview of how search engines work in locating and retrieving information, and suggests techniques that can be used in order to refine internet searching. Although there is a table included on the site that compares the different functions and search operators used by varying search engines, I believe that a more in depth analysis regarding specific search engines would have been a beneficial inclusion to these pages. That being said, this is an excellent starting point for improving search techniques.
Site 2:
Title: useit.com
Retrieved 4th August 2008,
http://www.useit.com/
Evaluation:
Jakob Nielsen is widely regarded as an authority on internet usability and effective website design, and his own site is a continuing record of his research and writing. The content provides an insight into the psychology of functional internet design techniques, and whilst the site is predominantly aimed at industry professionals, it also serves to inform users of the ways that they may already use the internet, whether that is efficiently or otherwise. Although this website contains many valuable lessons in regard to writing for the internet and website usability, I find it interesting that it can be quite difficult to locate specific information on this site.
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