2025-09-13
A few years ago, my friends and I decided to have a weekly movie night. Now, since we're all at college and living in dorms less than a 10 minute walk from each other, that was pretty easy. At the beginning, we simply told each other during the day the plans for that night. That way, we don't have to think that hard about it until the day of. Of course, eventually others heard about this weekly rhythm, and were slowly invited to join us for it. The issue is, word of mouth doesn't scale very well in our culture. Therefore, someone creates The Group Chat. The Group Chat contains everything you need to know about our circle of friends, especially the information about this weekly rhythm. We all love The Group Chat, because what used to be a fraught process where people might be accidentally left out now by default includes everyone.
And then people continue to be added to The Group Chat. This happens in several ways, although the all-time hits usually include "You're coming tonight? Let me add you to The Group Chat!" and "I'll just invite _____ to The Group Chat, it'll be easier that way." Platforms particularly seceptible to this have the (honestly nice) feature of adding someone to an existing chat, although platforms without that feature are not excluded. One day, I woke up and realized my small social gathering of friends has now grown to a almost corporate production, where a movie is played every week. The movie-watching group has grown immensely, and the post-movie time usually feels more akin to leaving class than to friendly community. I never know who might come to any given event, nor do I particularly care. The activity is the center of the event, not the people I am with.
Throughout this experience, I understood deeper how community works, and specifically how technology has broken it. There are so many thoughts which race through my head on this topic, but I'll restrict myself to one road for today.
Computers work using 1s and 0s. On or off. A binary system. Humans are "squishy". They have friends for one task, but don't necessarily always want them around. Opinions drift over time. Why do we treat humans as if they will perfectly map onto computers?
"The map is not the territory" - Alfred Korzybski
Pulling on the thread of common sense, a finite number of 1s and 0s cannot accurately represent the ability of a human to think. (I believe that would be impossible entirely, but hopefully all can agree we're not there yet.) As a programmer, I hope to be making good representations of reality knowing this is true. Since I cannot perfectly represent the territory (human conversation) on the map (computer), I should be considering which capabilities I need in order to represent the important parts, hopefully cheaply. The rest of this post shifts to look at which features I think have mapped technology well, and which ones are conveniences that don't actually fit the reality of the territory.
I can give a quick yes or no to my friend. This is my #1 use for instant messaging, where I just need to communicate a quick detail or fact. Maps to real life decently well, because it's similarly quick to send a yes or no message to a friend in person. This usage mostly just shortens the feedback loop.
While not everyone can write a good announcement, those who can do a masterful job of keeping their community informed. In the case of my movie-watching group earlier, when the group got big, messaging systems worked significantly better which is not particularly a downside. Even beyond the benefits of instantly sending the announcement to everyone, anyone can go back and re-read the message to make sure of what you said. Much better than word of mouth where memory is concerned, especially in this age where we've lost that power.
Since time immemorial, humans have been writing down things so that other humans can read them later. Even better, so that other humans can respond to them later. Instant messaging gets this perfect. No one has to worry that they asked the question hours ago, someone can still get back to them when they have time. The efficiency of posting allows more than one question to be asked, just like in real life. Some people are not quite fluent with the keyboard, but that seems similar to real life as well.
At all times, I can text my friend and know he will recieve. The speed and reliability of the medium mean I can make no excuses for my friend ignoring my text, except that he may be bad at checking his phone. This doesn't map real life at all, except by a simulation of being nearby another person. A short-range conversation, this exactly replicates what's happening. A long-distance communication, there will always be some risk involved that my message won't reach the recipient. This is in the neutral category because the answer is that it depends on what sort of interaction you want to mirror.
Lots of information is lost in transport when it comes to messages. The same holds for any written communication, meaning this one maps fairly well and I don't have much to say about it.
We've found ways to deal with this in our written-first world. Emoji come to mind, along with the wonderful tone indicators such as /s and /lh.
For good reason, friendships form and dissolve all the time. If the solution to tracking this change is to kick people out (unusual in real life under non-toxic circumstances) or create a new group (usually high friction), you'll have a hard time mapping this to real life. This is the one category for which I have an experiment I want to try. Perhaps, one could create a social service where no group chats will stick around, making The Group Chat impossible to create. Of course, one would need a full text search of good quality, which sounds like a fun challenge to me. Ignore my digression into solutions though, and consider that reducing the friction to tracking these drifting changes in my opinion is the best way to solve this natural drift.
Some of this I want to experiment with when I get the chance, and other pieces will lay by the wayside. Certainly though, this will not be an idea I lay down completely. Deeply considering whether the map fits the territory well enough remains a useful tool in my toolbox for analysing solutions. Of course, my words are neither exhaustive nor inerrant - I deeply hope that this will at least spark some discussion and perhaps begin to push the needle toward a true human-centric design for instant messaging.