Answer to Question #184329 in Economics for zakkiyya

Question

Identify what may be the social and cultural barriers to the use of mobile phones for delivering voice mail messages. Identify potential solutions and determine their relative costs, advantages and limitations, physical and social.

Answer 1

Voice messaging is the cornerstone of modern communication. Some are delighted with short audio recordings because you can answer on the go, others - in a frenzy, because you need to listen carefully, rehearse, and not only.

The indisputable advantage of voices is emotionality. No one will argue that it is difficult to determine the intonation of the addressee from the text. Even emoticons and stickers are sometimes not enough to convey the desired mood. But by the voice, it is almost always possible to understand in what mood a person is.

However, this is where the advantages of audio messages, in fact, end. First, voices are almost always inappropriate. When sending a voice message, especially without prior correspondence, it is impossible to be sure that it is convenient for a person to listen to it. There are many more situations when listening to messages is not handy than vice versa. The interlocutor can be in the office, on the subway, on a date, can listen to music, or do something else, from which he does not want to be distracted by someone else's monologue. Secondly, listening to a recording almost always takes longer than reading. This happens because, over the years of consumption of textual content, a person gets used to quickly analyze visual information. Thirdly, you can always find the desired message in text correspondence. With audio, this will not work. Fourthly, often the sender of a voice message can disperse and tell about several events at once. It is unrealistic to reply to such a report with a monosyllabic message. You either have to explain why there is no way to answer right away or write down a voice in response, which is also not always convenient. Fifth, text messages have previews and can often be used to determine the urgency of the response.

In order to solve the problem of voice messages, it is necessary to introduce an additional option: the user himself for each contact determines whether to accept or block voice messages.