This, honestly, is probably one of the dumbest ideas that I've ever heard. I feel that when people talk about technology being exhausting, something nearing 100% of the time it's because they...
This, honestly, is probably one of the dumbest ideas that I've ever heard.
I feel that when people talk about technology being exhausting, something nearing 100% of the time it's because they don't realize that (a) you have complete control over notifications, (b) notifications don't mean that you have to immediately take an action on something, and (c) in most situations you have the ability to control which specific kinds of notifications you receive. The whole reason why text messages got popular to begin with was that they were a means of communicating with people that is instant but not urgent. Why now do we insist on everyone being prompt about everything? This is not a technology problem, it's a people problem.
So with this messenger the point is that your messages only come and go once per day, so it becomes kind of like postal mail. The idea is that you only have to check the mail once a day and you do it on your own terms. But that's ignoring that the main reason why it's so relaxed is because you have no choice on it. Taking away instantaneous communication makes it less convenient, not more; if you are dealing with something causing you stress, it certainly isn't helpful to have to wait an extra day stressing about it. And if it actually is an urgent message, you don't want to have your window of opportunity shortened simply because you didn't know about it.
This whole idea just seems irresponsible. If I have someone say they need a second chance on something because I sent it too late past their arbitrary cut-off time and they got it 24 hours later, I'm not going to have any sympathy for that person; they clearly care more about their own convenience than their responsibilities - especially if it takes me another 24 hours to get their plea for lenience.
Reading the creators comments in the HN thread OP posted was also kind of infuriating, because Pony fits in the exact same niche as email already does. If I want to send someone something thoughtful, long form, and non-urgent, I send them an email. It's universal - anyone who has even sporadic internet access will have an email account. It was designed in the very beginning to be batched - i.e., not instant. And while push email is a thing, it's not necessary to get your email that way, and there are a ton of email clients that do not even offer that feature. Personally speaking, there are many people whom I love that have waited days for me to properly put a response together for them, and vice versa. Pony's creator originally had it working with mail, but his first piece of feedback was read as if they thought it was an anti-social tool - and that's because at it's heart it is. Timing can, and often does, matter. If I were to get a message from someone just saying "I love you" and I send a response a few hours later, it says something dramatically different than if I were to send that exact same response two days later.
I think that's a little overly harsh. Of course, from a communicative ability point of view, this is objectively worse by every metric than just emailing someone. But I think there is genuine...
I think that's a little overly harsh. Of course, from a communicative ability point of view, this is objectively worse by every metric than just emailing someone.
But I think there is genuine value in creating arbitrary limitations to appease our monkey brains. A good example is writers newfound obsession over typewriters and typewriter-like apparatus - not being able to edit the past, a feature is objectively more limiting and worse as a text editing device, helps people write.
In particular, I think many of your criticisms are predicated on the idea that you'd use this as your primary form of communication, which naturally would be absurd and quite a bad user experience. But I think it has a niche, as with many other similar services, as a novelty item. It's for penpals, for instance, who want to enforce the in-urgency and lightness of their communications, not "hey can you get some milk on the way back from work" or "please see attached invoice"
It's probably a bit more harsh than I intended it to be because I often conflated how irritated I was with the concept and idea and how irritated I was about the concrete thing that the creator...
It's probably a bit more harsh than I intended it to be because I often conflated how irritated I was with the concept and idea and how irritated I was about the concrete thing that the creator intends to charge money for; I realize I probably sound outright angry at some points. Please don't take that to mean I have some sort of vendetta against any of this.
Part of the frustration is that this whole thing is just one more tech product that takes human and social issues and attempts to fix it with technology and then charge people money for it. The entire concept with this product is a greatest hits of bad ideas - yes, it's reinventing the wheel. Yes, it's producing a clone of an existing thing but with more limitations. And yes, they are selling those limitations as benefits.
But the one thing I think is the worst part of all of it is that it exists to solve problems that people don't realize that they are responsible for creating themselves. For example, if one was to sign up for any given email account, you don't get notifications by default. You have to opt-in to them, and you always have the option to opt-out. The default experience is that you check your messages at your leisure. And if you go with basically any provider who does more than just IMAP and SMTP services, you probably already have access to a client that will allow you to schedule when to send an email or a delayed sending queue that gives you a moment to stop it and change it before it gets sent out.
Pony has one and only one feature that email doesn't already have - the ability to simply not give you your messages when you want them. Pony has to be storing your messages for a while before giving it to you or they would not be able to have a selectable timeslot for sending/delivering messages. So rather than having the choice to check your messages just once a day, you now are forced into checking your messages once a day.
Like you said, this is 100% a novelty product. It is practically guaranteed to fail over time because it doesn't actually offer anything anyone else can't. If it actually were an email client, I could see it being held by long-term subscribers who swear by it, but by keeping it as a seperate thing I can't see it ever really getting big. The author made a statement that they had broken the rule of trying to improve upon email, and even if it doesn't use SMTP he's still doing the same thing. There was another startup a year or two ago that promised that their approach to email was so much better that everyone would pay for it - even though it did nothing that Gmail didn't already do and was missing some more basic features. Today I don't even remember their name and I can't even find it in spite of my best google efforts.
That is clearly something made for people with poor impulse control, such as those with severe anxiety or ADHD. It is understandable that someone who's not afflicted by difficulties of this kind...
That is clearly something made for people with poor impulse control, such as those with severe anxiety or ADHD. It is understandable that someone who's not afflicted by difficulties of this kind will have trouble perceiving the value of certain limitations, but I assure you that in some cases limitation can be very much a feature.
Yeah tbh I’m not going to use it because I don’t want to spend money but the concept itself I’m absolutely a fan of. Like an email client that I only receive emails one time at the same time every...
Yeah tbh I’m not going to use it because I don’t want to spend money but the concept itself I’m absolutely a fan of. Like an email client that I only receive emails one time at the same time every day sounds like heaven. I constantly try to force myself to not check my email 1000x a day but I can’t. In general, I really like tech that helps save me from my piss-poor impulse control. As I keep working on my ADHD I hope to eventually not need the limitations, but until then.
I get your argument and I can even agree to the point, but I don't agree that it's clear who the audience is. Honestly, I think from the wording of this blog post that the author building this...
I get your argument and I can even agree to the point, but I don't agree that it's clear who the audience is. Honestly, I think from the wording of this blog post that the author building this platform does not specifically mean it to be used by people with impulse control problems or anxiety issues; he seems to be implying it's for everyone.
It would be hard for someone like me to use a product like this one if my peers didn't use it as well. But I don't think it needs to be stated that, if you have no trouble controlling your usage...
It would be hard for someone like me to use a product like this one if my peers didn't use it as well. But I don't think it needs to be stated that, if you have no trouble controlling your usage of messaging during the day, this product will likely not appeal to you.
I too think it's a stupid idea. Almost as dumb as Vine and Pownce were for the restrictions they put in place. Nothing is more frustrating than having to wait a day or two to get a reply to the...
I too think it's a stupid idea. Almost as dumb as Vine and Pownce were for the restrictions they put in place.
Nothing is more frustrating than having to wait a day or two to get a reply to the message you sent. Applying the typical response time a male online dating site user gets to a messaging app is just going to piss lots of people off.
Pony has few to no business applications because there are very few circumstances where you'd want a two day time gap between messages. That delay offers no advantages other than being able to edit or redact the message from your outbox within the window before it sends, and even then a lot of email clients allow you to set a delay. And from a personal use perspective... there are already many solutions to limit your own exposure to communications. On mobile you can restrict push notifications, and on PC you can limit your own access to emails, IM apps, etc.
And why would you use it when loads of personal and business-focused messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Slack, LINE, WeChat, Signal, Discord, Telegram, etc exist? Why would you use it when emails exist?
I'm going to give a different take than everyone being critical of this product idea, since I actually find it a potentially very helpful one. As @lou mentioned, I actually do have severe anxiety...
I'm going to give a different take than everyone being critical of this product idea, since I actually find it a potentially very helpful one. As @lou mentioned, I actually do have severe anxiety (GAD+Panic Disorder) and impulse control issues as a result.
For things like online instant messages, that isn't such a big deal because people generally accept that individual messages will often be brief, and stream of consciousness based, so follow up messages to clarify things further are often necessary. And on most platforms those messages can also be edited afterwards. And for things like comments on social media platforms, those can also be edited too, which is why I tend to obsessively edit comments here repeatedly until they finally say exactly what I originally intended them to in my mind. (My only rule to myself regarding that is, once someone replies I stop editing in ways that might change their interpretation of what I said, or the tone of what I said, and try to only stick to fixing spelling/grammar mistakes after that point.)
However, for more permanent and professional forms of communication, like email and SMS messages, my anxiety and lack of impulse control has bitten me in the ass many many times over the years. E.g. I have often hit send well before I have properly proof read what I wrote, finished writing what I needed to say, or made sure my language so was not overly terse or harsh, and more professional sounding. And unfortunately with email and SMS, sending follow ups immediately after the first is often incredibly awkward, and viewed as unprofessional.
So the concept behind this product of delaying the sending of more permanent messages is actually a good one for people like myself. And were this particular implementation not just once a day sends, and a direct messenger platform (which everyone involved needed to be on), but instead allowed for more granular control of outgoing messages scheduling, and integrated with iMessage, SMS, and/or email, I would have jumped on it in a heartbeat!
p.s. For people suffering from similar issues as myself, there are already some things that can help with emailing. Gmail has a scheduled send function (click the arrow next to "Send") that I often use these days. When you use that, a new "Scheduled" category will pop up on the left side menu with a list of all the delayed outgoing email. And so long as you act before the time you picked to send those emails, you can proof read them again, edit them, or even outright cancel the send.
p.p.s. This comment took me over 30min to write, and caused me no small amount of anxiety, because of how hard I was trying to say all I needed to say, how I wanted to say it, without having to go back and edit this repeatedly later... just to give you an idea of how difficult things like this often are for me.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who ends up editing their comment 400 times before someone replies because I keep realizing I don't like how I worded something or didn't convey an idea clearly...
And for things like comments on social media platforms, those can also be edited too, which is why I tend to obsessively edit comments here repeatedly until they finally say exactly what I originally intended them to in my mind. (My only rule to myself regarding that is, once someone replies I stop editing in ways that might change their interpretation of what I said, or the tone of what I said, and try to only stick to fixing spelling/grammar mistakes after that point.)
Glad to know I'm not the only one who ends up editing their comment 400 times before someone replies because I keep realizing I don't like how I worded something or didn't convey an idea clearly or my tone was off.
Thank you. I thought the same. I find it a little sad so many people are hostile to this; it is promising tech and I kind of hope to see more human-facing tools being written with less...
Thank you. I thought the same. I find it a little sad so many people are hostile to this; it is promising tech and I kind of hope to see more human-facing tools being written with less instantaneity and more "batching" in mind.
Oddly, I'm reminded of how git took over subversion. Beyond being a better tool, it also allows you to bunch up and curate work and only once you feel ready do you push it, publishing it to the world. Whereas an svn commit was always instantly available upstream.
The way we consume news is a good example as well. We know constantly consuming news, doomscrolling etc is unhealthy, versus batching things up eg. looking at the day's news over breakfast or some such. Morning Brew, ever so often promoted on YouTube videos, is inspired by the old-style "newspaper over breakfast" way to consume news and I believe it's taken off quite well.
I was an always-online kid, back before people were always online. I've hit 30 now and the past couple of years I find myself to be less and less available/online. I have less edit-induced anxiety than you (I just accept that this is how I write; it's fine to go back and edit a bunch of times), but like you, I use "schedule send" in gmail. Not just to give myself more time, but unless time is actually of the essence, to also give less the impression that I'm immediately available to people who reach out.
It’s been a while since I had an android phone and I miss almost nothing about it (if someone else prefers android I’m happy for you but it just isn’t for me). The one thing I miss is in my old...
It’s been a while since I had an android phone and I miss almost nothing about it (if someone else prefers android I’m happy for you but it just isn’t for me). The one thing I miss is in my old messages app on android I could schedule text messages. That was something I loved making use of. I’d be up at 2am and think of something to send to someone but didn’t want to wake them up in the middle of the night (or admit I was up at 2am doing stupid bullshit lol). It was really great for when I was having anxiety attacks or depressive episodes where I knew I wanted to respond eventually, felt too overwhelmed to have a conversation right now, but I know I’ll forget about this message the second I close the app. Ezpz, write the response I want to say, schedule it to shoot out in a couple hours, and almost always by the time the message was sent I was feeling better. Great feature. Really wish apple would bring that into iMessage.
I do basically the same. Before I get a vote or a comment, I can change a lot. But when someone interacts with it, it would be unfair to make changes that alter the meaning.
My only rule to myself regarding that is, once someone replies I stop editing in ways that might change their interpretation of what
I do basically the same. Before I get a vote or a comment, I can change a lot. But when someone interacts with it, it would be unfair to make changes that alter the meaning.
So, when my dad first hooked up his computer to the internet (via AOL in the late 90s), the internet was anything but instantaneous. Hell, most people might hook up their modem for an hour a day...
So, when my dad first hooked up his computer to the internet (via AOL in the late 90s), the internet was anything but instantaneous. Hell, most people might hook up their modem for an hour a day or maybe less if they shared the line with their telephones, so your personal computer wasn’t even expected to be online all the time. Instantaneity of messaging came along much later (or maybe earlier if you look at messaging over intranets?). Either way, email is a perfectly fine pace for asynchronous messaging for me. If I only want to read emails once a day, then I only check it once a day. The mail server is ready to receive new mail 24/7, but that doesn’t mean I need to have my email client open 24/7 nor configure it to notify me the instant new mail arrives.
To expand on this, it reminds of some of the Focus Mode features Apple has been adding to their OSes. I really like their model of distinguishing time-sensitive notifications from other...
To expand on this, it reminds of some of the Focus Mode features Apple has been adding to their OSes. I really like their model of distinguishing time-sensitive notifications from other notifications. What I don't like is that you have to think really hard about configuring this stuff, but once you have configured it, it works pretty well. I've set it up on my phone now so I receive a lot fewer distracting notifications on the weekends and after working hours. I think recognizing that certain messages are time-sensitive and others aren't is a good insight, and given the sundry (and seemingly ever proliferating) channels that abound, I do find it nice to have that out-of-band metadata/classification (however Apple or the apps decide it) attached to notifications in order to suppress the time-insensitive ones until a time that is convenient for me.
This, honestly, is probably one of the dumbest ideas that I've ever heard.
I feel that when people talk about technology being exhausting, something nearing 100% of the time it's because they don't realize that (a) you have complete control over notifications, (b) notifications don't mean that you have to immediately take an action on something, and (c) in most situations you have the ability to control which specific kinds of notifications you receive. The whole reason why text messages got popular to begin with was that they were a means of communicating with people that is instant but not urgent. Why now do we insist on everyone being prompt about everything? This is not a technology problem, it's a people problem.
So with this messenger the point is that your messages only come and go once per day, so it becomes kind of like postal mail. The idea is that you only have to check the mail once a day and you do it on your own terms. But that's ignoring that the main reason why it's so relaxed is because you have no choice on it. Taking away instantaneous communication makes it less convenient, not more; if you are dealing with something causing you stress, it certainly isn't helpful to have to wait an extra day stressing about it. And if it actually is an urgent message, you don't want to have your window of opportunity shortened simply because you didn't know about it.
This whole idea just seems irresponsible. If I have someone say they need a second chance on something because I sent it too late past their arbitrary cut-off time and they got it 24 hours later, I'm not going to have any sympathy for that person; they clearly care more about their own convenience than their responsibilities - especially if it takes me another 24 hours to get their plea for lenience.
Reading the creators comments in the HN thread OP posted was also kind of infuriating, because Pony fits in the exact same niche as email already does. If I want to send someone something thoughtful, long form, and non-urgent, I send them an email. It's universal - anyone who has even sporadic internet access will have an email account. It was designed in the very beginning to be batched - i.e., not instant. And while push email is a thing, it's not necessary to get your email that way, and there are a ton of email clients that do not even offer that feature. Personally speaking, there are many people whom I love that have waited days for me to properly put a response together for them, and vice versa. Pony's creator originally had it working with mail, but his first piece of feedback was read as if they thought it was an anti-social tool - and that's because at it's heart it is. Timing can, and often does, matter. If I were to get a message from someone just saying "I love you" and I send a response a few hours later, it says something dramatically different than if I were to send that exact same response two days later.
I think that's a little overly harsh. Of course, from a communicative ability point of view, this is objectively worse by every metric than just emailing someone.
But I think there is genuine value in creating arbitrary limitations to appease our monkey brains. A good example is writers newfound obsession over typewriters and typewriter-like apparatus - not being able to edit the past, a feature is objectively more limiting and worse as a text editing device, helps people write.
In particular, I think many of your criticisms are predicated on the idea that you'd use this as your primary form of communication, which naturally would be absurd and quite a bad user experience. But I think it has a niche, as with many other similar services, as a novelty item. It's for penpals, for instance, who want to enforce the in-urgency and lightness of their communications, not "hey can you get some milk on the way back from work" or "please see attached invoice"
It's probably a bit more harsh than I intended it to be because I often conflated how irritated I was with the concept and idea and how irritated I was about the concrete thing that the creator intends to charge money for; I realize I probably sound outright angry at some points. Please don't take that to mean I have some sort of vendetta against any of this.
Part of the frustration is that this whole thing is just one more tech product that takes human and social issues and attempts to fix it with technology and then charge people money for it. The entire concept with this product is a greatest hits of bad ideas - yes, it's reinventing the wheel. Yes, it's producing a clone of an existing thing but with more limitations. And yes, they are selling those limitations as benefits.
But the one thing I think is the worst part of all of it is that it exists to solve problems that people don't realize that they are responsible for creating themselves. For example, if one was to sign up for any given email account, you don't get notifications by default. You have to opt-in to them, and you always have the option to opt-out. The default experience is that you check your messages at your leisure. And if you go with basically any provider who does more than just IMAP and SMTP services, you probably already have access to a client that will allow you to schedule when to send an email or a delayed sending queue that gives you a moment to stop it and change it before it gets sent out.
Pony has one and only one feature that email doesn't already have - the ability to simply not give you your messages when you want them. Pony has to be storing your messages for a while before giving it to you or they would not be able to have a selectable timeslot for sending/delivering messages. So rather than having the choice to check your messages just once a day, you now are forced into checking your messages once a day.
Like you said, this is 100% a novelty product. It is practically guaranteed to fail over time because it doesn't actually offer anything anyone else can't. If it actually were an email client, I could see it being held by long-term subscribers who swear by it, but by keeping it as a seperate thing I can't see it ever really getting big. The author made a statement that they had broken the rule of trying to improve upon email, and even if it doesn't use SMTP he's still doing the same thing. There was another startup a year or two ago that promised that their approach to email was so much better that everyone would pay for it - even though it did nothing that Gmail didn't already do and was missing some more basic features. Today I don't even remember their name and I can't even find it in spite of my best google efforts.
That is clearly something made for people with poor impulse control, such as those with severe anxiety or ADHD. It is understandable that someone who's not afflicted by difficulties of this kind will have trouble perceiving the value of certain limitations, but I assure you that in some cases limitation can be very much a feature.
Yeah tbh I’m not going to use it because I don’t want to spend money but the concept itself I’m absolutely a fan of. Like an email client that I only receive emails one time at the same time every day sounds like heaven. I constantly try to force myself to not check my email 1000x a day but I can’t. In general, I really like tech that helps save me from my piss-poor impulse control. As I keep working on my ADHD I hope to eventually not need the limitations, but until then.
I get your argument and I can even agree to the point, but I don't agree that it's clear who the audience is. Honestly, I think from the wording of this blog post that the author building this platform does not specifically mean it to be used by people with impulse control problems or anxiety issues; he seems to be implying it's for everyone.
It would be hard for someone like me to use a product like this one if my peers didn't use it as well. But I don't think it needs to be stated that, if you have no trouble controlling your usage of messaging during the day, this product will likely not appeal to you.
I too think it's a stupid idea. Almost as dumb as Vine and Pownce were for the restrictions they put in place.
Nothing is more frustrating than having to wait a day or two to get a reply to the message you sent. Applying the typical response time a male online dating site user gets to a messaging app is just going to piss lots of people off.
Pony has few to no business applications because there are very few circumstances where you'd want a two day time gap between messages. That delay offers no advantages other than being able to edit or redact the message from your outbox within the window before it sends, and even then a lot of email clients allow you to set a delay. And from a personal use perspective... there are already many solutions to limit your own exposure to communications. On mobile you can restrict push notifications, and on PC you can limit your own access to emails, IM apps, etc.
And why would you use it when loads of personal and business-focused messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Slack, LINE, WeChat, Signal, Discord, Telegram, etc exist? Why would you use it when emails exist?
I'm going to give a different take than everyone being critical of this product idea, since I actually find it a potentially very helpful one. As @lou mentioned, I actually do have severe anxiety (GAD+Panic Disorder) and impulse control issues as a result.
For things like online instant messages, that isn't such a big deal because people generally accept that individual messages will often be brief, and stream of consciousness based, so follow up messages to clarify things further are often necessary. And on most platforms those messages can also be edited afterwards. And for things like comments on social media platforms, those can also be edited too, which is why I tend to obsessively edit comments here repeatedly until they finally say exactly what I originally intended them to in my mind. (My only rule to myself regarding that is, once someone replies I stop editing in ways that might change their interpretation of what I said, or the tone of what I said, and try to only stick to fixing spelling/grammar mistakes after that point.)
However, for more permanent and professional forms of communication, like email and SMS messages, my anxiety and lack of impulse control has bitten me in the ass many many times over the years. E.g. I have often hit send well before I have properly proof read what I wrote, finished writing what I needed to say, or made sure my language so was not overly terse or harsh, and more professional sounding. And unfortunately with email and SMS, sending follow ups immediately after the first is often incredibly awkward, and viewed as unprofessional.
So the concept behind this product of delaying the sending of more permanent messages is actually a good one for people like myself. And were this particular implementation not just once a day sends, and a direct messenger platform (which everyone involved needed to be on), but instead allowed for more granular control of outgoing messages scheduling, and integrated with iMessage, SMS, and/or email, I would have jumped on it in a heartbeat!
p.s. For people suffering from similar issues as myself, there are already some things that can help with emailing. Gmail has a scheduled send function (click the arrow next to "Send") that I often use these days. When you use that, a new "Scheduled" category will pop up on the left side menu with a list of all the delayed outgoing email. And so long as you act before the time you picked to send those emails, you can proof read them again, edit them, or even outright cancel the send.
p.p.s. This comment took me over 30min to write, and caused me no small amount of anxiety, because of how hard I was trying to say all I needed to say, how I wanted to say it, without having to go back and edit this repeatedly later... just to give you an idea of how difficult things like this often are for me.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who ends up editing their comment 400 times before someone replies because I keep realizing I don't like how I worded something or didn't convey an idea clearly or my tone was off.
Thank you. I thought the same. I find it a little sad so many people are hostile to this; it is promising tech and I kind of hope to see more human-facing tools being written with less instantaneity and more "batching" in mind.
Oddly, I'm reminded of how git took over subversion. Beyond being a better tool, it also allows you to bunch up and curate work and only once you feel ready do you push it, publishing it to the world. Whereas an svn commit was always instantly available upstream.
The way we consume news is a good example as well. We know constantly consuming news, doomscrolling etc is unhealthy, versus batching things up eg. looking at the day's news over breakfast or some such. Morning Brew, ever so often promoted on YouTube videos, is inspired by the old-style "newspaper over breakfast" way to consume news and I believe it's taken off quite well.
I was an always-online kid, back before people were always online. I've hit 30 now and the past couple of years I find myself to be less and less available/online. I have less edit-induced anxiety than you (I just accept that this is how I write; it's fine to go back and edit a bunch of times), but like you, I use "schedule send" in gmail. Not just to give myself more time, but unless time is actually of the essence, to also give less the impression that I'm immediately available to people who reach out.
It’s been a while since I had an android phone and I miss almost nothing about it (if someone else prefers android I’m happy for you but it just isn’t for me). The one thing I miss is in my old messages app on android I could schedule text messages. That was something I loved making use of. I’d be up at 2am and think of something to send to someone but didn’t want to wake them up in the middle of the night (or admit I was up at 2am doing stupid bullshit lol). It was really great for when I was having anxiety attacks or depressive episodes where I knew I wanted to respond eventually, felt too overwhelmed to have a conversation right now, but I know I’ll forget about this message the second I close the app. Ezpz, write the response I want to say, schedule it to shoot out in a couple hours, and almost always by the time the message was sent I was feeling better. Great feature. Really wish apple would bring that into iMessage.
I do basically the same. Before I get a vote or a comment, I can change a lot. But when someone interacts with it, it would be unfair to make changes that alter the meaning.
So, when my dad first hooked up his computer to the internet (via AOL in the late 90s), the internet was anything but instantaneous. Hell, most people might hook up their modem for an hour a day or maybe less if they shared the line with their telephones, so your personal computer wasn’t even expected to be online all the time. Instantaneity of messaging came along much later (or maybe earlier if you look at messaging over intranets?). Either way, email is a perfectly fine pace for asynchronous messaging for me. If I only want to read emails once a day, then I only check it once a day. The mail server is ready to receive new mail 24/7, but that doesn’t mean I need to have my email client open 24/7 nor configure it to notify me the instant new mail arrives.
To expand on this, it reminds of some of the Focus Mode features Apple has been adding to their OSes. I really like their model of distinguishing time-sensitive notifications from other notifications. What I don't like is that you have to think really hard about configuring this stuff, but once you have configured it, it works pretty well. I've set it up on my phone now so I receive a lot fewer distracting notifications on the weekends and after working hours. I think recognizing that certain messages are time-sensitive and others aren't is a good insight, and given the sundry (and seemingly ever proliferating) channels that abound, I do find it nice to have that out-of-band metadata/classification (however Apple or the apps decide it) attached to notifications in order to suppress the time-insensitive ones until a time that is convenient for me.
I'm reminded of how Gmail would let you undo sending email by delaying sending it.
Via: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence