Laughter in cyberspace
Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open is a book you should buy and read. There is a great deal to say about this book, but I'll start with the jokes.
On p.129, there's a good section about jokes — it turns out that their real purpose is social bonding rather than humor. We laugh so easily with people we know, and there's a reason.
Johnson says:
[S]ocial interaction without laughter produces modified brain chemistry, which affects both your background impression of the exchange — its emotional color — and the resulting trace memories the exchange leaves in your head. Putting smiley faces into email to supplement the lack of verbal intonation helps convey when you're trying to be funny, but because the recipient of your message is still alone when reading it, she won't be likely to laugh out loud . . .
As the brain science of social connection becomes more widely appreciated, our communications tools will be judged increasingly with this yardstick. Attention deficit disorder is conventionally described as the classic ailment of our multitasking age, but when you look at most electronic communication through the lens of neuroscience, it's hard not to think that autism might be a more appropriate “poster condition” for the digital society.
This was an “aha” set of paragraphs for me; I've often wondered about the effect or meaning the flatness of electronic communications will have for society. Nothing comes close, so far, to the many channels of communication we have when we talk face to face. Maybe we'll get better at graphics; maybe our emoticons will be tied to our pulse rates and sweatiness; maybe it'll be done through gentle constant probing of our foreheads. But communication isn't rich enough online (yet) to be humanly satisfying.