I hate IM in some ways. It gives you more options to go talk to people, but you get to feel just as retarded for not being able to come up with a good way to start a conversation. On that note...
I'd definitely agree, actually: given the same people and other situational factors (which are, for me, more of a determiner here), IM sucks compared to talking to someone face to face -- but it's still a lot better than nothing.
It's mostly bad if you're trying to bring up something serious, but it's not too hard to model this:
Case 1: face-to-face. I mention something and the person knows that I can see that they heard it. They feel obligated by politeness to reply. If they're busy they'll at least say so, if only in an effort to get me to leave them alone since it's hard to ignore people actually talking when you're trying to work. If I say something stupid I at least get an immediate reaction, so there's something of a check against the conversation going to heck because we're not on the same page.
Case 2: IM. All I can prove is how long they've been idle (through the AIM idle stuff or, for zephyr, finger username@unix#.andrew). They could have their IM client buried under other things, or have clicked away the zephyrgram window, or just left, or otherwise not respond -- and the worst I can assume is that they're busy. They can pretty much just ignore anything I say if it's dumb -- which is useful if I'm trying to talk to someone who's really annoying because I can do it too. But the conversation can just go away without me seeing the person walk away, and I won't know what happened. That certainly affects the way to approach a conversation.
Case 3: e-mail. That's really hard - you've just put out a missive for someone to view and their reply is at their discretion. The actual difference between this and IM is that they will almost definitely see it -- but at some undefined time. This seems to break a lot of the expected mechanics of conversation and it's presumably why IM works better.
Case 4: at a party or gathering. Some of the reasoning behind the IM case applies here because there are too many stimuli to pay attention to, so there are lots of excuses. Being in another conversation here is sort of an excuse not to reply, as well as a way out of a conversation you find unpleasant.
I guess my point is that the factor of how people enter and exit a conversation has something of an effect on this, and it has this effect because a conversation, especially a personal one, is implicitly two-way -- a statement expects a response.
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It's mostly bad if you're trying to bring up something serious, but it's not too hard to model this:
Case 1: face-to-face. I mention something and the person knows that I can see that they heard it. They feel obligated by politeness to reply. If they're busy they'll at least say so, if only in an effort to get me to leave them alone since it's hard to ignore people actually talking when you're trying to work. If I say something stupid I at least get an immediate reaction, so there's something of a check against the conversation going to heck because we're not on the same page.
Case 2: IM. All I can prove is how long they've been idle (through the AIM idle stuff or, for zephyr, finger username@unix#.andrew). They could have their IM client buried under other things, or have clicked away the zephyrgram window, or just left, or otherwise not respond -- and the worst I can assume is that they're busy. They can pretty much just ignore anything I say if it's dumb -- which is useful if I'm trying to talk to someone who's really annoying because I can do it too. But the conversation can just go away without me seeing the person walk away, and I won't know what happened. That certainly affects the way to approach a conversation.
Case 3: e-mail. That's really hard - you've just put out a missive for someone to view and their reply is at their discretion. The actual difference between this and IM is that they will almost definitely see it -- but at some undefined time. This seems to break a lot of the expected mechanics of conversation and it's presumably why IM works better.
Case 4: at a party or gathering. Some of the reasoning behind the IM case applies here because there are too many stimuli to pay attention to, so there are lots of excuses. Being in another conversation here is sort of an excuse not to reply, as well as a way out of a conversation you find unpleasant.
I guess my point is that the factor of how people enter and exit a conversation has something of an effect on this, and it has this effect because a conversation, especially a personal one, is implicitly two-way -- a statement expects a response.