Neven’s Law

Earlier today, Neven Mrgan and John Siracusa were having a little chat about the adequacy of the automatic and manual transmission metaphor making the rounds in the iPad context.

If you don't know Neven¹, he's a bright and kind guy. But given his brightness, he tends to disagree with people online sometimes. Particularly, the aforementioned conversation and the occasional banter with Merlin Mann. And when he disagrees, he wants to keep it nice. So he adds a colon-parenthases emoticon².

Over time, this gets awkward, and it brought me to a simple realization, which I shall call Neven's Law. It can ring true of Twitter, online chatting, and email. Essentially, any digital, written communication:

The appropriateness of a medium is inversely proportional to the number of emoticons necessary in a given discussion.

Now, I appreciate them having these conversations in public so the masses can participate. But now that we have a law, perhaps we can apply it and bump these conversations up to the easiest-possible theater where emoticons are no longer necessary.

Or, we can continue with our emoticons—using them as clues for the audience that, "this would be better said elsewhere." But there you have it. Now go forth with your new knowledge and continue discussing.

:)