Comfort noise

At the end of an introductory tutorial today, we touched briefly on a half remembered news item regarding Skype adding in background noise to phone calls.

This wikipedia entry tells me that it wan’t a dream – though I cannot find the news article that I half remembered.

It highlights a curious interplay between people and technology, and the conflicting feelings we have about embracing new interventions.

In the early days of VoIP (voice over IP) user testing found that the lack of analogue noise associated with old phones, led to unsatisfactory conversations where people would talk over each other and feel *unsettled* by the silence.

Mobile and web comms companies, therefore, added, what became known as comfort noise or comfort tone -replicating the poor line connections of the past, in order to make users feel more comfortable.

This came to my mind as I was preparing to upload the audio interview with Ben Williamson. In the talk he makes mention of American students walking out on an exam, because the exam was computer mediated, individually tailored to each participant… in short, not traditional. So, not familiar. So, not to be trusted. Anecdotes such as this conflict with a very common dialogue about having to shape our approaches to teaching in order to embrace the expectations of a digitally literate student body.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise

(Image by Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay)