02 Aug 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Imagine writing a note to someone you met last night at a party, someone you're interested in. You struggle to find just the right words, you edit yourself, delete and rewrite, pause to think about how he/she will react. Your potential date will either think, "god, this guy is not the sharpest tool in the shed, it took him 90 minutes to write a seven-line e-mail," or maybe s/he will think, "wow, he thought very carefully about what he was saying, he must really be interested." Kinda risky, I'd think.

Reading someone's writing opens a window into their soul, but this technology merely opens a window into their synapse firing rates.

02 Aug 2004 | Adam Kazwell said...

the thing that scares me about EmoteMail is having the recipient see what didn't show up in the final draft. What value is added knowing that I misspelled recipient 3 times before I posted this comment?

Also, can you imagine how much longer it would take to read/respond to emails if you had all this additional contextual information to evaluate? If you want more than just cold-hard text, maybe pick up a phone or meet face-to-face :)

Where I think some additional contextual information would be interesting is in art. Can you imagine, instead of just looking at the finished product, getting to watch each stroke of a Picasso masterpiece?

03 Aug 2004 | but that's just me said...

Jeez, what a nightmare! It was bad enough being graded on my writing in school! I honestly don't see any practical value in this. It claims that seeing all of this contextual information can help you get inside the mind of the writer and get to know his or her personality. How does knowing how long it took to write an e-mail give any insight into the person who wrote it? I agree with Brad in that the background information could easily be interpreted the wrong way.
In fact, the scenario Brad presented was the first thing that came to my mind when I read about this (except reversed, since I'm a chick).

Sometimes it takes me an hour to write an e-mail, because my kids are pulling on the hem of my shirt every five minutes or because I'm multi-tasking and trying to fit a sentence in between the million other things I'm doing. It actually makes me chuckle to think of the sort of images the camera would capture of me while writing an e-mail...

I also don't agree with the site's claim that contextual information is very evident in traditional forms of writing. For instance, a note written in messy handwriting could mean the note was written in a hurry or it could mean that the author simply has a problem writing neatly. Again, it's open to interpretation.

To me, the end result of a written piece, whether that be an epic or an e-mail, is what gives insight into the writer's mind. It's not the typos he or she makes along the way.