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:

The odds are good and the goods are great

I stole the title and thesis of this post from the great etirabys and arguably I should just link her post.

via Thing of Things August 31, 2026

Bug blindness

I used to wonder why I see so many more bugs than most people. I easily observe hundreds to thousands of bugs per week and nothing seems to work, but most people I talk to don't see anything like this. For a long time, I thought this had something to …

via Posts on August 30, 2026

Microfictions 2

A few more microfictions, still no LLMs.

via Evan Fields August 7, 2026

more     (via openring)