Extra Credit: The Media Equation

The Media Equation

Politeness is discussed in this chapter of the book. The author is saying that politeness is inherent in our society and it is remarkable how early we are introduced to it as children. Even teachers use politeness as a bench mark of how educated a child was. From the mayor example where he asks "how am I doing?" he is more likely to receive polite responses. On the contrary, if you asked some random citizen, they will have an honest opinion. Humans are even polite to computers and in fact, are probably more truthful towards them.

How can we design computers and media to be polite as humans? We use Grace's Maxims.Conversations should be guided by four basic principles. Quality- Speakers should speak about things that are true. Quantity- each speaker should interact only in the way that the conversation demands. Relevance- speakers should only speak about topics related to the conversation at hand. Clarity- the ideas should come off as unhindered and clear. There are other rules of etiquette that the author speaks about such as it is impolite to reject, its polite to say hello and goodbye, its polite to look at people while they are speaking, and it is polite to respond to people in the method that they contacted you. These are some of the things that we can design media and computers with in the future. We have to keep these in mind if we want to design more friendly interactions on computers.