Instant Messaging in Literature: Part 1

I bought a paperback in the airport the other day, a new page turner by W.E.B. Griffin, called By Order Of The President. Early on in the book, we meet a thoroughly-modern General, who has adopted instant messaging as a way to plow though some of the inconveniences of his meeting-cluttered life:

Having the laptop on the commanding general’s desk and on the conference table had been the idea of Command Sergeant Major Wesley Suggins.

“General, if you turn that thing on and sign on to the Instant Messenger, I can let you know who’s on the horn. You follow, sir?”

It had taken General Taylor about ten seconds to follow Suggins’s reasoning.

General Taylor often thought, and said to his inner circle, that Napoleon was right when he said “Armies travel on their stomachs,” that during World War II someone was right to comment, “The Army moves on a road of paper,” and that, he was forced to the sad conclusion, “CentCom sails very slowly through a Sargasso Sea of conferences.”

The problem during these conferences was that there were always telephone calls from important people — such as Mrs. Elaine Naylor, or the secretary of defense — for the commanding general. General Naylor always took calls from these two, but some of the calls were from less important people and could wait.

Sergeant Major Suggins usually made the decision and informed the caller that General Naylor was in conference and would return the call as soon as he could. But sometimes Sergeant Major Suggins didn’t feel confident in telling, for example, the assistant secretary of defense for manpower or someone calling from the White House that he was just going to have to wait to talk to the boss.

In that case, there were two options. He could enter Naylor’s office, or the conference room, and go to the general, and quietly tell him that he had a call from so-and-so and did he wish to take it?

The moment  the Sergeant Major entered the conference room, or the office, whoever had the floor at the mopment in the conference would stop — often in midsentence — and politely wait for the sergeant major and the general to finish.

This wasted time, of course, and prolonged the conference.

The second option — which Naylor originally thought showed great promise — was a telephone on his desk and the conference table, which had a flashing red button instead of a bell. That had been a failure, too, as the instant the button began to flash whoever was speaking stopped tlaking, in the reasonable assumption that if the general’s phone flashed, the call had to be more important than whatever he was saying at the moment.

From the beginning, the use of the laptop to announce calls had been a success. Naylor always caught, out of the corner of his eye, activity on the laptop’s screen. He then dropped his eyes to it and read, for example:

MRS N?????

Or: 

SEC BEIDERMAN?????

Or:

GEN HARDHEAD?????

Whereupon he would put his fingers on the keyboard and type:

BRT

Which meant “Be Right There,” and, further, meant that he would stand up, say, “Excuse me for a  moment, gentlemen,” and go into a small soundproof cubicle, which held a chair, a desk, and a secure telephone, and converse with his wife or the secretary of defense.

Or, in the case of General Hardhead, for example, he would quickly type:

NN. 1 HR

Which stood for “Not Now. Have Him Call Back in an Hour.”

Or:

FOWDWIIP

Which stood for “Find Out What, and Deal With It If Possible.”

General Naylor found out he could get and receive messages in this way without causing whoever had the floor to stop in midsentence and wait.

This does a great job — without the techno jargon — of explaining the value of instant messaging as a foundation for continuous partial attention. By splitting his attention in general, and occasionally accepting non-intrusive interrupts from Suggins, he and the others involved in his conferences are able to make better headway, and he is able to occasionally step out for the important calls, when he decides to. He gets to decide what is a valid request for his immediate attention. As a result, we get overall improvement in efficiency for everyone involved, including Naylor. But most importantly, efficiency across the network is improved.

Anyone interested in the ettiquette that should surround corporate use of IM should read this, and then immediately institute a sensible policy: please bring your laptops to conferences, do as described above, and turn off your cell phones.

tags: web+griffin, instant+messaging+ettiquette, instant+messaging+in+literature, by+order+of+the+president, continuous+partial+attention