There's a lot of back-and-forth in this discussion about whether real-time communication is good or bad, and whether the responsibility for dealing with it lies with the content producer or the end user. I think the optimal solution lies somewhere in the middle: content producers need to be respectful of users' limitations (time, energy, attention, etc.) and users have to understand and communicate those limitations. Real-time communication is merely a tool, and like any other, it can be used well (for things like important events that are occurring now) or poorly (because who really needs to know instantly when an acquaintance listens to a new dubstep remix?).
The concept of the Slow Web is catching on precisely because, as technology has matured, the idea of real-time communications has become the default, and as a result, using nearly any service exposes you to a bombardment of information. Technologically, it's easy: something happens, so you immediately fire off an email or trigger a push notification. Why wait? Why bother implementing a queue or a summary when it's so simple to just do it now?
Yes, users can always opt out, but often doing so means you either have to opt out of the service entirely (thereby losing the ability to benefit from it at all) or that the service falls out of your consciousness because they have no setting between "firehose" and "off", and there are so many other things demanding your attention.
Especially when services are ad-driven, they want to find ways to keep getting your attention. Every time they notify you of an update and you load the page, that's an ad impression. Every time you're prompted to share something and it gets a friend of yours to sign up, that's a new data point for advertisers. They have a vested interest in pulling your attention away from whatever you're doing and back to themselves, and real-time communication makes that easier.
You can choose to ignore notifications or put them off until later, but the fact that they're sitting there with unread information is often difficult to ignore. The fear of missing out drives us to keep checking; the fact that every fifth or eighth or twelfth tweet makes us laugh or think is partial reinforcement that drives us to try to read every one. Opting out through willpower alone is more difficult than it seems for most people.
The concept of the Slow Web is catching on precisely because, as technology has matured, the idea of real-time communications has become the default, and as a result, using nearly any service exposes you to a bombardment of information. Technologically, it's easy: something happens, so you immediately fire off an email or trigger a push notification. Why wait? Why bother implementing a queue or a summary when it's so simple to just do it now?
Yes, users can always opt out, but often doing so means you either have to opt out of the service entirely (thereby losing the ability to benefit from it at all) or that the service falls out of your consciousness because they have no setting between "firehose" and "off", and there are so many other things demanding your attention.
Especially when services are ad-driven, they want to find ways to keep getting your attention. Every time they notify you of an update and you load the page, that's an ad impression. Every time you're prompted to share something and it gets a friend of yours to sign up, that's a new data point for advertisers. They have a vested interest in pulling your attention away from whatever you're doing and back to themselves, and real-time communication makes that easier.
You can choose to ignore notifications or put them off until later, but the fact that they're sitting there with unread information is often difficult to ignore. The fear of missing out drives us to keep checking; the fact that every fifth or eighth or twelfth tweet makes us laugh or think is partial reinforcement that drives us to try to read every one. Opting out through willpower alone is more difficult than it seems for most people.