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SUMMARY:Do we communicate too much?- - Richard Harper (Microsoft Research)
DTSTART:20110223T160000Z
DTEND:20110223T170000Z
UID:TALK29232@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Saba Hinrichs
DESCRIPTION:In this talk I will ask whether it is true to say that ‘Ever
 yone is suffering from communications overload’. I will ask how we might
  measure human communication and whether we can come up with a straight fo
 rward answer. I will contrast different ways of measuring human expression
  by looking at how measuring is done in communications engineering and com
 puter science. I will also review arguments about how one might understand
  and measure communications overload from the perspectives of communicatio
 ns studies and the social sciences more generally\, such as anthropology a
 nd sociology. I will assess and compare how all these disciplines understa
 nd ‘overload’ and explain why some don’t think quantitative measures
  are relevant. I will then make a bigger contrast between ‘common sense
 ’ and scientific ways of understanding human communication.  I will sugg
 est that one of the problems that we have when answering the question\, 
 ‘do we communicate too much’\, has to do with deciding on the relative
  merits and values of\, on the one hand\, this ‘everyday’ or ‘common
  sense reason’ and\, on the other\, scientific approaches to this topic.
  I will suggest that common sense is much more useful and precise than we 
 might think\, and science often misleading and imprecise when it comes to 
 the particular topic – what it means when we speak of\, and how we measu
 re\, human communication. I will remark on the importance of this insight 
 for innovation in the field of HCI. Material for the talk with come from m
 y latest book\, Texture: human expression in the age of communications ove
 rload (MIT Press).\n
LOCATION:Arthur Marshall Meeting Room (next to EDC loft)\, Inglis Building
 \, Engineering Department
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