Years ago in America, neighbors often shared telephone lines, which were called “party lines.” The plot of the 1957 film Pillow Talk, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day, was based on the two stars sharing a party line in New York City.
My, how times have changed!
Party lines gave way to area codes, and citizens around the world started calling each other without an operator. With the proliferation of cellphones, we could call one another wherever we were. Now the Internet reigns supreme -- and what a supremacy. Skype Ltd. , the Internet-based phone service, offers free phone calls, and in two years becomes a $5 billion asset. Even with the decline of the dollar, that’s still a lot of money to me.
The impact of the Internet has changed many of the ways we communicate, including, most importantly, our personal communications. Yes, we get instant access to information and entertainment, but the Internet’s greatest impact on each and every one of lies in the way we communicate today.
The wireless BlackBerry device has become so “addictive,” many people refer to it as a "CrackBerry." Many of us -- no, most of us -- can't ignore our email, whether or not we’re expecting something important to show up in our Inbox. We come home from the office, the gym, walking the dog, and just need to “check” email. Personal communication no longer is constrained by common courtesy. I may not want to call you after a certain hour, but I can always send you an email, and, if you’re up and checking, you can respond in moments.
As for business communication, the bounds of traditional courtesy are now ignored, and, in fact, the reverse is now true. We now routinely, deliberately send emails at odd hours, demonstrating our commitment to the job, and impressing our bosses and co-workers with our dedication.
Of course, all progress has a cost. One can’t erect a modern, midtown marvel without tearing down the previous edifice. For the Internet, the cost of instant, person-to-person communication can be expensive -- it is clarity.
In an office, an individual can walk down the hall and speak with a co-worker, for example. Watching the body language, listening to the other party, one can carefully shape the tone of the message, and even its substance. “Whoops!” I think to myself. “He’s taking this too hard, I need to soften the message." I can do that by smiling and relaxing more.
In a phone call, we hear the other party’s voice, which is often enough to modify our tone and substance.
With email, however, clarity can be lost too easily.
Emotion is hard to communicate. Saying “I love you” in person allows you to look in someone’s eyes and communicate sincerity. Saying “I love you” over the phone is a little more challenging. “Were you being facetious? That sounded sarcastic to me!”
But, email emotion is the most demanding.
“I love you”, in an email, is flat, and comes across just like each of the other times you’ve told this person. Varying nuance requires care and attention to language, which is frequently antithetical with the use of email in the first place. On the Internet, acronyms abound, as though we’re helping the environment by saving electrons. “Btw, how r u?”
In business, or in personal life, communication via email should be the last option, if clarity is important. If time is a factor, email can be great. And, if there is need to send the same message to more than one recipient, email can be an excellent choice. But -- email comes at a cost, and one needs to balance that cost with the benefits. Frankly, from what I’ve seen, there are some very unbalanced emailers out there.
— David Meister, Cable entrepreneur and co-founder of The Sundance Channel
As bandwidth grows and get ubiquitous I think we will see telepresence technologies developing and getting more commonly used.
In my personal experience nothing replaces a personal meeting (everyone present) if the subject is important and we want commitments. For follow-ups a phone call (or conference call) works fine and for quick updates e-mails are good enough.
There's still something about seeing each other (body language, voice entonation, etc.) that wasnt replaced by phone calls aor e-mails. Maybe telepresence does.
In the meantime, if it is not business, I use the traditional emoticons ( :-), ;-), etc.) when writing to friends. In this way we make sure we understand each other when we are just joking or being serious.
Ahh…the drab, text-based “form” letter—which is never exciting, but it will get the job done.
What I’m talking about is the capacity of semantic email messages to include structured queries embedded in the text. This is bound to open the door to a wide range of automated, email-mediated applications. Now, that’s exciting. At least, I think it is.
My favorite IM comment came from my brother, a busy lawyer, who asked me not to send him "jokes", since they automatically popped up on his computer, and he couldn't ignore them. Is that like not being able to ignore your cell phone when you're with someone? Aren't we able to control our lives to that degree? Or are IM, cell phones, and Blackberries the chains of slavery to communication in the new millennium?
Reminds me of my days at sleep-away summer camp as a child. I had some post cards that were pre-addressed, to encourage "letters" home.
It strikes me that if there's a convenient form for some of my corespondence, then that correspondence is pretty basic, and probably not overly important to me. I do that now, when I take a letter and change some key elements, but still retain the substance:
"Dear Sally, Peggy, Mary, To Whom It May Concern:
I want to apologize for my rudeness, thoughtlessness, behavior, my actions last night, week, year or so, dozen or so times we got together. I don't know what came over me, how to drink, what you put in those things, but they were delicious. I understand if you never want to see me again, and I will pay you back the money for bail in a couple of days, soon, eventually. Nevertheless, would it be too much to ask you to fix me up with your roommate, your friend, somebody?"
Interesting. As individuals, we want courtesy in the business world we inhabit. As an owner/investor, would I care?
That's really a loaded question---I do care. I also care about the (perceived) obligation to be socially responsible, and like to use a business organization to further that end. It does does come with some baggage, however. There will surely be those who don't share your perspective, and resent using the company as a platform to further your aims, rather than theirs. (No good deed goes unpunished.)
So yes, Courtesy is always good, even in business, and your point is excellent---e.mail is inconsistent with courtesy too often.
Great points in the article. I often counsel the people I work with that email is very limited, stilted form of communication. Communication, to me, is a two-way interaction. With email, you haven't communicated until the person has opened, read and replied to your email. And you have no ideas what external or internal factors are influencing how they read and interpret your message.Instant messaging brings interaction into play but people seem to have forgotten common courtesy. People think IM gives them some sort of right to be rash, rude and inappropriate. They type and send things they would never say in person and this is a shame.When I first started in business, there were no cell phones, email or IM. Business moved at a much more considered pace. While advances have certainly provided benefit, my hope is that courtesy is not sacrificed for speed.
In keeping up with “the future of email” theme, I researched an interesting concept called semantic email, which extends the notion of the Semantic Web to email.
Basically, the Semantic Web is the predicted evolution of the Internet in which online information will be stored in machine-readable formats for easy retrieval by software applications, computer agents, and virtual assistants.
Semantic email is loosely based on this concept. Imagine a semantic email message that was more like a form with buttons to press instead of containing flat text messages. It would transform a text-based email message into a machine-readable form that can be used to gather information and figure it out for you.
Come on David, aren’t you looking forward to a future where semantic email will work harder for us?
Well said David. It is interesting you mention "one-speak", and coming from an urbanizing India (and living in the US), I see what you mean. Web English has invaded into anything and everything. Of the recognized 1500 odd Indian languages in 1991, most have merged or diluted with mainstream and officially recognized languages (14 in number) with English replacing difficult words. It is uncommon to hear someone speak in their native language and not interfere it with a cool English word. Teenagers, who own the coolness factor, never cease to fascinate the learned with their colloquial inventions. At this point, it is probably just not a case with a particular geographical location (as you have implicitly pointed out) - it is omnipresent and that makes me wonder if Web 2.0 is not just a web concept but more of a critical mass phenomena (like the 100th monkey experiment)? Email, in all of this, is just one of the tools humans have in their finger tips to paint their mental gibber.
Is this the "dumbing down" of society, or is it the natural evolution and "improvement" of society?
But, I think you're right, that any progress displaces what had existed previously, and, in communication, what we have used so extensively. Btw, I read that there are hundreds of languages that are dying out. These are not former broad-based tongues like Latin, or dialects like Yiddish (I don't know if Yiddish is a dialect, a language, or what; maybe it's the e.mail of its day!). These are languages that in some cases are only spoken by a handful of people, as the rest of a clan or tribe assimilates into some "main stream". Should we regret the passing of a soon-to-be-forgotten language, of herald the entry of another group into the mainstream?
A few years ago, T-shirts featuring Bruce Springsteen (and other western cultural celebrities) became commonplace in Tibet. Should we bemoan this as neo-colonialism, or applaud it as the elimination of barriers? Regardless, we seem to be heading toward "one-speak", a universal bastardization, with some echoes of former "classic" languages, plus a heavy helping of the latest cultural communication-speak, all delivered through the all-powerful Internet. As barriers fall, and cultures merge, communication increases, and for the foreseeable future, the medium of choice for so many remains e.mail
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