http://www.techsploitation.com/2007/10/16/im-here-to-tell-you-that-im-gone/ Technology - Science - Pop Culture - Sex Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:52:20 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 http://www.techsploitation.com/2007/10/16/im-here-to-tell-you-that-im-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-49456 This Old Network » Blog Archive » “Always Away” for plausible deniability Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:33:04 +0000 http://www.techsploitation.com/2007/10/16/im-here-to-tell-you-that-im-gone/#comment-49456 [...] Annalee Newitz writes: More importantly, I can avoid unwanted chatter that interrupts my workflow. I do this by deploying a form of IM etiquette that I call “always away.” IM clients allow you to specify a status that gets displayed to other people using IM, and the defaults are things like “available” or “away.” I always set my status to “away,” sometimes adding a phrase like “working” or “fighting aliens.” Most of my colleagues do the same thing (except for the fighting aliens part). This allows me to have plausible deniability when I need to ignore a purely social message that interrupts my workflow. After all, I might really be gone. But I can respond when a colleague messages me about something important. [...] [...] Annalee Newitz writes: More importantly, I can avoid unwanted chatter that interrupts my workflow. I do this by deploying a form of IM etiquette that I call “always away.” IM clients allow you to specify a status that gets displayed to other people using IM, and the defaults are things like “available” or “away.” I always set my status to “away,” sometimes adding a phrase like “working” or “fighting aliens.” Most of my colleagues do the same thing (except for the fighting aliens part). This allows me to have plausible deniability when I need to ignore a purely social message that interrupts my workflow. After all, I might really be gone. But I can respond when a colleague messages me about something important. [...]

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