Read Receipts for Better Living
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You probably already know about Read Receipts because they’re increasingly common in the apps we use every day. A read receipt is a software feature (one of many in a burgeoning category we can call Communication Status) which indicates that somebody read the message you sent them.
As a sender, it’s good to know you got my message. As a the recipient, the value is less obvious. I’ve asked friends to enable Read Receipts for iMessage — it’s turned off by default — and the common response is Hell No (followed narrowly by Oh-Uh-Uh). This knee-jerk reaction makes sense because we’ve been trained to ferociously defend our privacy online, and preventing automated sharing is a simple way to keep control.
Here’s the oft-recited problem with letting someone see that you’ve read their message: an immediate obligation to reply. An imagined stopwatch in the sender’s head. Perhaps you’d rather reply at a strategically-timed future hour, or not at all. Because we so rarely control the pace of communication day-to-day, perhaps we’ve earned the miniature power trip of “I’ll reply later”. That emotion-infused logic is good enough that few even think through the alternative. Here it is:
You send me a message, and right away, you see that I’ve read it. I’m not obliged to send you a reply, because I already did — the Read is the Reply. In many exchanges, this instant, automatic, counterintuitively personal reply is enough: *Read*.
Suppose you sent a question and need an answer from me. You’re not wondering if I heard the question, and I’m not scurrying unnecessarily to reply. I’ll respond when I can, or when I have the answer. Win-win. Read Receipts are the digital Head Nod — an efficient, honest, wordless acknowledgment that “I hear you”.
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Slowly but surely, we imbue our digital communication with the subtlety and honesty native to real-life interaction. If a read receipt is a head nod, the ubiquitous 3-dots-while-I’m-typing is a furrowed brow. I can send a thumbs-up (Facebook Messenger) or a Laugh (Path) with near-zero effort — just like *actually* thumbs-upping or laughing. Snapchat tells me when we’re both looking at a text chat and suggests we do video. Slingshot asks me to React. Video chat is free and reliable and practically a commodity. This is getting more human. This is getting good.
This is gaining speed. Eye tracking cameras will improve the already-good-enough accuracy of Read Receipts. Realtime sentiment-recognition of image and audio will pass along your feelings — if not your face — without proactive input required. VR is around the corner. And did you see the film Her? Srsly.
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Today, iPhone users can enable Read Receipts for Everybody or Nobody. Read Receipts are turned off by default, which aligns with users’ privacy expectations in general but depresses adoption substantially.
Sending Read Receipts (and their ilk) means being transparent with your contacts, and we all already have a list of contacts we trust: our Favorites. Attn: Apple; please add a Favorites-only permission for Read Receipts and enable it by default.
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Online communication no longer requires that we give up the richness and honesty of in-person communication, but in a sordid twist, many have adopted technology’s sterile idiosyncrasies as new modi operandi.
Stop doing that. Start by enabling Read Receipts.
I’m working on Highly: highlight to share the best things you’re reading. For example, I highlighted this article. And yes, Highly sends read receipts.
Tweet at me if you’d like to test drive Highly.
