Notifications that wait for conversational gaps

May 30th, 2010
ideas, tech
In science fiction televison (trek, etc) notification beeps always seem to wait until they won't be interrupting things. While occasionally someone will be paged while talking, it's always for the dramatic effect of cutting them off in the middle of an idea. This has always seemed neat but basically impossible to me. Except that it may not be. What if the communication divice always was listening, and could delay notification by, say, three seconds waiting for a gap in conversation?

(The amount of gap time could even be variable: the interrupter sets a gap time, then as long as it's not less than the minimum allowable gap time the interruptee has set on their device, the longer gap is used. This would allow people to be more polite in non-urgent situations.)

Comment via: facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Raffles

I think that raffles are kind of silly, because when you enter a raffle and you don't know what you're going to get, or if you're going to get anything, what's the point? If you pay for your raffle ticket, and you could pay the same amount…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts September 13, 2026

Air Filters in Schools

My dad went to a conference recently, and when I asked him about what happened there he said it was a conference for people in biosecurity. When I asked him about the different kinds of biosecurity stuff that the different groups did, he said one did air f…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts September 12, 2026

The One That I Want Another Sister

I want a baby sister or brother. Because I want to play with another kid, and I don't want to play with Josie because she is in preschool and I won't play with her very often. So I want to play with someone very often who is not just two people. …

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts September 5, 2026

more     (via openring)