The "Crisis of the Summons": A transformation in the pragmatics of "Notifications," from phone rings to instant messaging

This article analyzes a class of interactional devices that share the property of being "designed-to-occur" (e.g., alerts, alarms, warnings, calls, summons) and that can be more generally categorized as "notifications." This class of devices is directly related to interruptions and to attention-management issues, and is crucial to the unfolding of communication events. In reviewing the last thirty years of human-computer interaction research on this topic, this article highlights the transformation of the meaning of interruptions and notification devices. Initially perceived as disruptions in the accomplishment of tasks, interruptions have gradually acquired a positive value as "notification" devices and are meant to be subtler and to embed some degree of "intelligence" of the recipient's context. The article provides two empirical case studies on the uses of mobile musical ringtone and of instant messaging in organizations, showing the kind of work that users actually do to pattern their environments with an orientation toward shaping in advance the way in which they might be interrupted and notified. Concerned with how they might be notified, the users are becoming more skilled and turning into "pragmatic amateurs," less inclined to accept the imposition of a summons (which also testifies to a kind of "crisis of the summons"), and with a keener sense for appreciating the working and pragmatic consequences of a given type of notification.