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Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

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The value of talking                                                                                    

Posted at: Jun/01/2009 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: My philosophy,

I think that one of the best things about being a person is interacting with other people. Talking, listening, and general socializing is fun. Unless you are one of those rare “uni-bomber” types, you probably also enjoy the company of others. By our very nature we are social creatures. We communicate to share, we communicate to get affirmation, we communicate to avoid being alone, we communicate to resolve issues, this list could go on and on.

Classically we think of our primary way to communicate as verbal face-to-face. In this mode we not only hear the words, we also subconsciously pick up on subtle pragmatic signals. These signals might include tone of voice, body language, tonal inflections, eye contact, hand movement, posture along with a host of other things. Communication is also a skill, and like so many other skills it requires practice to learn and practice to stay reasonably proficient. As complicated as all this sounds, we learn and practice most of these skills subconsciously through normal interaction. These skills are facing a whole new challenge from technology and the new generation growing up with this technology.

Don’t get me wrong, I think technology is a great thing. I make a living with computers and the related applications. Email, chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, instant messaging, telephone text messaging are great ways to communicate. All of these tools are great ways to say something in a fast and efficient manner. But all of the aforementioned technologies have a downside or risk. When you communicate with any of these new tool you lose the face-to-face component of communication. Without the face-to-face aspect there is a greater risk of misunderstanding. What you said in jest might not be interpreted that way without the tonal inflection or the related smile. When you send an important message without the eye contact it may not be understood with the same emphasis you hoped for.

In a professional environment it is very common to communicate with email and instant messaging tools. When something gets misunderstood it will get followed up by another email. As tempers grow in the misunderstanding so too does the email chain and all the related frustration. Ultimately, a quick walk down the hall and a 3 minute conversation will generally resolve all the misunderstanding.

Is there a concern here? On the good side, all these new means to communicate have made our interactions much more flexible. We can send a quick email, we can text a cryptic IM or phone text message, but all these also run a higher risk of misunderstanding. The down side is our risk of getting it wrong. Utilizing these new tools is fostering greater physical isolation where we are no longer practicing those all important pragmatic skills as much as we should. All of these situations lead to a higher risk of misunderstanding and anguish. Lacking the face to face also makes it easier to say something aggressive to someone we would not have said had we been looking at each other. Even when we do get together, we may be so out of practice at understanding eye contact and body language that a new range of frustrations occur.

So what is the fix? I can’t offer up a fix, only a concern. We have become dependant on these new media for communicating and their related convenience. What we need to pay attention to is the possibility of getting it wrong and the need to once in a while have a face-to-face. Remember, it is also very hard to detect a smile in an email.

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