Bandwidth of communication
People know how the medium of conversation affects the discussion itself. For example, if you have a high number of back-and-forth messages with someone over Slack, you might suggest a quick video chat to delve more deeply into the issue. More information can be conveyed, faster, with a Zoom conversation. But what if neither party had suggested a video conference? Would we realize we were trapped in surface-level conversation?
It’s not intuitive that the properties of a signal will affect its message, but they do. As different communication mediums emerge, we need to understand the implications.
Slack is lower bandwidth than email - while you can write a paragraph in slack, you can write much longer memos over email. But slack is intrinsically much higher frequency. It’s not unusual to slack someone 10 times a day. For two people who want to communicate normally, slack is preferable to email, because the “speed” is closer to regular conversation. For memos, where a large amount of communication is sent at once, email is preferable.
Theoretically, you could have any conversation with any tool. Practically, which mechanism you use affects not just how much and how fast you can convey things, but what things you discuss at all.
