The original note, as written at the time
We can create similar pings by SMS and phone calls for other media like notifications and social media communication systems.
Ongoing development
The same availability ping, extended by SMS and by phone call, to every other medium: notifications, social platforms, and the systems that currently reach you without asking.
One mechanism, applied consistently, is worth more than a hundred notification settings, because a notification setting is a rule you write in advance for a situation you cannot foresee.
A ping works because it is a question asked at the moment it matters. It requires no configuration beyond who is allowed to ask, and it degrades gracefully: if the other side cannot answer, the message simply waits, and nobody has to be offended.
The reason to push it down to SMS and voice is coverage. A ping inside an app only works for people who have that app. On the protocol layer it works between a smartphone and a ten-year-old handset, which is most of the country.
There is a governance version of this that interests me more than the personal one. Notifications from institutions — a water bill, a court date, a clinic appointment — currently arrive when the institution chooses, in whatever medium it prefers, and the citizen has no way to say not now. A universal ping gives a person one answer to give, once, to everyone.
The risk is that the ping becomes another thing to manage, and that a system designed to reduce interruptions becomes a stream of requests for permission to interrupt. So it must be quiet by default, and its default answer must be not now.
The point of the mechanism is to give the receiver the power to answer. Everything else is implementation.