Bah, humbug! 28 Dec 2006

While 'tis the season of good will to all men, much of what's been written this month has focused on how technology is driving us apart instead of bringing us together.

37signals recent blog entry entitled "Why do blog comments seem to bring out the worst in people so often?" cites numerous recent articles - from esteemed commentators such as Jason Kottke (Kottke.org), David Pogue (New York Times) and Jaron Lanier (Time magazine) - that describe the mean-spirited tone of online forums. And today ars technica chips in with "Technology use invites lying" - highlighting the results of a study that found that 72 percent of us have stretched the truth via some form of technology, with 27 percent lying via e-mail, 27 percent via SMS ('Ur my 1 & only, 4 real!'), and 18 percent via mobile phone calls.

This type of bad behaviour is nothing new of course. It's easy to make unkind remarks when technology shields your identity from those on the receiving end - or, at least, allows you to pass judgement upon them indirectly rather than face-to-face. What makes this behaviour particulary interesting right now however, is how designers and developers are attempting to tackle these types of problems. At one end of the spectrum (the "mo' technology" end) we have companies like Skype - who recently added a stress / lie detector to their 3.0 release for Windows - at the other end (the "less technology" end) are companies like particletree.