For all the convenience it brings, I've lately been reminded of some of the shortfalls of electronic communication. Yes, I realize that I'm writing about said problems on a blog, which is by definition a form of electronic communication. The irony of that is not lost on me.
1.My first beef with all this fancy-schmancy electronic communication is that it's so, so easy to misinterpret.1a. When words are written, and especially when they're written quickly - as most e-mails and texts are - very little thought goes into considering how these words will sound when they're echoing through the recipient's head. It takes an incredibly skilled writer to convey the finer aspects of the spoken language in words; things like subtle humor, momentary hesitation, and a slight change in tone are often lost when what was once audible is translated to visual. And that's for skilled writers. For most of us Joe Schmo writers, we shouldn't even attempt that, because it's never going to come out sounding the way we think it will sound.
1b. But it's not just the writers: it is the annoying habit of most readers (including me) to err on the side of interpreting the worst from the written words, rather than the best. What might have been intended as a joke sounds like an insensitive barb; what may have been meant as a question or favor sounds like a dictate or order. Taken together, all this hasty writing and limited reading create a perfect storm of miscommunication.
2. Second is the issue of real life - remember that? - encroaching on one's digital communication. (How dare real life do such a thing!) Truth is, this is bound to happen.
2a. Sometimes it's intentional: the person sitting across the desk commands more attention than the person at the other end of the e-mail. Sometimes it's accidental: you forget your phone when you leave the house, so cannot supply the immediate responses to text messages that people are used to. Either way, the person on the other end of the message doesn't know what the hold up is with your reply. Maybe you had been doing the back-and-forth with some frequency, and they're expecting an answer. Maybe they said something a little bit edgy, forward, funny, controversial, [insert adjective here], and they're eager to see how you will respond. When you don't, they start to assume the worst: "maybe I went too far," "maybe he didn't think that was funny," etc. In reality, you just left his phone in his car, but there's no way for your communication buddy to know that for sure.
2b. Sometimes even when you are supplied with the immediate response you're looking for, the attitude and tone of the reply are colored by things that have happened in someone else's day. Unfortunately, you have no way to know what's been happening in said other day, and your day might be quite different. Maybe you are bright and chipper, while the other person just had a cup of coffee spilled on them immediately after being bitten by the neighbor's dog. They're not going to be in a top-'o-the-morning mood, and their text will probably reflect that. Which brings us back to complaint number one: problems with writing and reading.
2c. Because real life usually is more pressing, often you can't give a serious conversation the attention or focus it deserves. (I'll just bypass for now the question of why you're having that serious conversation over text or e-mail at all. Let's [for the sake of my sanity] assume it's because it's the only possible method of communication available to you.)
Anyway, you're having this important conversation. And it's true that you could give it 100% of your attention. You could just sit on the couch with your phone or computer awaiting a response, and then carefully craft your reply. This could happen, but it usually doesn't. We've gotten so used to the convenience of being able to do other things with our phone as a minor distraction that we don't even think about it anymore. So you're having a serious text conversation about something, and you realize you need to run to the bank before it closes, and because you can, off you go. But then your conversation becomes fragmented, and is only receiving a portion of the attention it deserves, whereas we'd (hopefully) never treat a face-to-face conversation about the same serious subject with that kind of dismissal.
3. Sometimes conversations should just be given more respect than that!3a. It might be that the person you're communicating with via text doesn't know you that well, or you don't know them. If that's the case, just pick up the phone and call. I'm a big fan of erring on the side of formality when the rules aren't totally clear (the red dress post is getting all kinds of references these days - see the last paragraph).
3b. Or should I call it 2d? Sometimes the conversation is just not a good one for the text or e-mail arena. I don't have hard-and-fast rules about this, but I try to keep text conversations to light chit-chat and plan-making. E-mails can get a little heavier, because I typically spend more time on them. But if things start to get too serious, I like at least telephone usage, or face-to-face if possible.
4. In voice communication, you have to hear yourself talk. And you have to hear, and hopefully see, the other person talk, too.
Some people love to hear themselves talk; others hate it. Whichever camp you find yourself in, hopefully you can at least listen to yourself, rather than just hearing. I think if you can really listen, you're much more likely to convey your point with precision, and hopefully with a lot less collateral damage. If you're listening, and thinking as you go, you can craft sentences so they have exactly the impact you want them to have. How will this sound? Is this really the point I want to make? Am I choosing the right words?
Which is not to say that this can't also be the case with writing. Good writers are incredible at sentence crafting and the conveyance of ideas. But usually when we write for the everyday reader, we're not crafting, we're just thinking on paper (or on screen, as the case may be). Sometimes I'm good about reading through e-mails I've written before I hit send - which helps with this problem a bit - but I certainly don't always do it. If you can be very diligent about reading your words before you ship them off to someone else, you can probably cross this off your list of problems.
4b. Seeing, or at least hearing, someone else conveys worlds of information that you don't get from the words themselves. If you're face-to-face with someone, you can immediately see in their expression if something you've said didn't come out right, or if they're not getting your joke, or whatever. There are tons of books about the art of conversation, and this one in particular has a fascinating section about those split second expressions that we may not even know we see in someone else's face, but we pick up on and interpret nonetheless. Those expressions don't show up on your LCD screen.
5. I'm going out on a limb a little bit with this one, but I think it's becoming more and more true as solitude becomes harder and harder to find: we're becoming dependent on others to know what we're thinking. Hear me out.
When our only methods of communication were face-to-face or voice-to-voice (and I suppose I'm talking land lines for purposes of this particular complaint), we had to spend some time with our thoughts before we could verbally vomit our problems all over someone else. Even if that stewing time was just as long as it took you to drive home from work, you were alone, with no one to talk to, and you got to think through your issues all by your own self.
Now the inclination is to immediately fire off an identical text to your 23 best friends, and within seconds you will have 23 (or at least 16 or 17, depending on how many people left their phones in their cars) different ideas about how you should respond to whatever dilemma you're facing. And it's reassuring to know that your friends are there for you, certainly. But sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's your life, and all the opinions and if it were me scenarios in the world often don't amount to a hill of beans when the real decision is yours alone. Spending a little time alone with your own thoughts before you get all that extra input seems like a good way to start sorting them out.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total luddite, just a little bit of one. I'll whip out my phone as quickly as the next gal to look something up on the all-knowing interwebs or dive into a game of backgammon. But I try not to let technology stand in for an actual relationship or genuine communication. A quick text or e-mail is a great way to just say hello to someone you haven't talked to in a while, but texting alone does not a friendship make (or maintain).
I haven't read it, but this book seems like it'd be right up my ranting-and-raving alley, if I ever get back to reading books for fun. [This was the last book post I wrote - almost two months ago! Oh, ha! Look at that. I wrote about Dracula on Valentine's Day. Funny that I didn't notice it at the time.]
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