dessalles

Another quick note on the changes that come with recording everything…

I have my instant messaging program, iChat, set to “Automatically save chat transcripts”, which is useful in every way remembering the details of a conversation could be useful. Recently, I’ve found myself referencing these transcripts fairly frequently; and so recently, I’ve found myself frustrated with the habit I have of closing chat windows after every burst of messaging. That is, my conversations are cut up across multiple transcript files since I don’t leave the window open for the duration of a conversation (iChat starts a new transcript every time a window is opened/closed). This obviously makes finding a particular bit of a conversation particularly cumbersome since that bit might be located in any one of a dozen or so files. This got me thinking that I need to break this habit so as to ensure contiguous conversations are saved as single transcripts. And that led me to the following thought…

When everything is recorded, people modify their behaviors so that the recorded information is easier to find in the future.

Making information easier to find in the future requires an understanding of what interface will be used to access that information. Because I recall conversations as events, I rely on neat chronological lists to access conversations, and in turn I’m modifying my behavior to support a more usable chronology. But if for whatever reason I decided I want to access chat transcripts via search, I’d probably make sure to incorporate memorable keywords/tags into my conversation. So I suppose at that point I’d be having a conversation with two people - the second being my future self.