I think I may be not the best person to answer this
question. I’m a little bit old fashioned. Do I use modern technology? Yes,
obviously. I cannot imagine living without it! But, on the other hand, I can
see its negative influence on people I know. Part of it is how we communicate
with each other.
First, let’s define communication. It’s a process of
exchanging information between two human beings by speaking, writing or using
some other medium. It can have a direct or indirect form.
In the past communication used to be a privilege.
Reaching other people via letters or telegrams wasn’t easy. Sometimes it wasn’t
cheap as well. So we might assume that if somebody was about to share any kind
of information it had some kind of value, it wasn’t meaningless. If a lover was
sending a perfumed letter to his partner you could be sure he meant it. The lady
who was the addressee of such a letter would read it fifteen times and keep it
under her pillow. If another person was sharing some bad news about the funeral
of a family member, it had to be written in a mature and mellow way. People
used to put some effort in creating such messages. They were aware of its
importance.
Does it still work this way? Unfortunately not. I blame
common access to technology. Its bad usage. Mobile internet access is very
cheap, we don’t pay anything for sending mails or Facebook messages. We can
access those services any time and pass information right away. So… why should
we care about things I wrote about above? We don’t have to pay attention to the
form of communication anymore. We can
end up conversation any time. We can say things we don’t believe in or things
we wouldn’t say during face to face conversation. We can use a lot of
shortcuts, memes as replies and smileys. What does it lead us to?
We exchange tones and tones of meaningless messages. We
spend our time in front of computers, with smartphones in our hands, but do we
really talk with each other? Do we hear each other? I don’t think so. We want
communication to be quick. We want to be able to pass a lot of information
having not so much time. This means passing very simple messages. We think in
simple, uncomplicated way. We don’t even bother ourselves trying to send good
quality messages. Grammar? Screw it! Good manners? Who has time for it?!
In fact, we are becoming more and more stupid. Obviously,
it’s not the fault of technology, which just enables communicate easily. It’s a sign of our times. It’s a result of the
end of ‘knowledge cult’. But what can be fixed in our communication? I think we
should go back to our roots. We need to understand the importance of the form.
People need to realize that the ability to pass information is a necessity--a certificate of our
intelligence. It’s a measure of respect. It’s a proof of being fully dedicated to
conversation, to your interlocutor. We need to understand that communication is
a tool in our hands, it has its purpose but it’s not a purpose by itself.
Link:
In this presentation are a lot true. Technology is good when we use her sensibly. Today we can contact whith people which are on the second side of the world in few second, but if
ReplyDeletesuddenly technology will be die, a lot of people would can't write basic letter, where they cant write every information in understandable way for the second page.
Adam, I partly agree with You, however I think that our generation can't speak without any new technology. Computers and other touch interfaces are more natural for interpersonal communication. Unfortunately. Many people prefer write email and send message via communicator than to call or prepare face to face meeting. This situation will kill interpersonal skills.
DeleteOther example: In popular fast food network people prefer place an order via touch screen than via conversation with shopkeeper.
@Kamil: I think I noticed the same thing. The more you're attached to technology, the more your jobs relies on it, the more problems you have with communication. It's not an easy task anymore. It's much harder and required much more effort than it used to.
DeleteDo you think that there's any way back?
Still you can't just do everything via touchscreen. You go to job, meet your friends, visit your family, rise your children. Technology won't deprecate Christmas Eve supper ;) don't demonize it. Nowadays children are going to similiar schools as we did - they interact with each other, they play football as well, not only LoL, for real ;)
DeleteI totally agree with that what you wrote in this presentation. The development of technology, which had to facilitate communication, now disturbs it. Through the heavy usage of instant messaging and social networking, where we write single words and send emoticons, we forget about how we should communicate. During the meetings, face to face, we do not send a emoticons, so we have a problem with the expression of our thoughts and intentions.
ReplyDelete@Klaudia: What I also realized (and then I found several articles confirming it) that people tend to be more open, more willing to present extreme beliefs and talk about their feelings while doing it via Internet. Face to face communication doesn’t give them the same comfort as Internet. We prefer to be anonymous, represented by avatar, nickname or profile picture than being brave enough to share the same ideas or emotions in real life.
DeleteHave you noticed the same thing?
There's a lot of truth to what you wrote in presentation, I think also that we ourselves often we bring to this state of affairs. We do this quite consciously as young parents. Note that today, as soon as the children becomes more independent inculcated in them, unfortunately express their emotions digitally rather than in conversation, many children do not talk at home longer with their children only he writes sms a day or communicates through a variety of services. In addition, often the first gift that a child gets a toy but rapidly with time, this changes to the latest model of the phone and the computer. Lack of talking with your child and showing him the little that there is such a thing as a world "in real life" and honest conversation face to face with another person, they inculcated in him a lack of empathy and behaviors that contribute to the fact that it is absent every day and loses basic feelings.
ReplyDelete@Sylwia: You have tackled one very important point – responsible parenthood. In my opinion we have to be sensible parents. We can’t give children a tablet so it can be used as a replacement of time we’re not spending with them. Obviously it leads to the situation when children prefer to spend time with mobile devices than with family or friends. Because they are not taught how to arrange their time differently. That there can be a different way of communication than a virtual one.
DeleteWhat kind of advices would you give to parents_version_2016 to help them with rising the kids?
I've read very carefully your article. I disagree a little with your point of view. In my opinion and by the philosophie of a great Russian philosopher, literary critic and semiotician, Mikhail Bakhtin, word is getting a various meanings during its use in language. It means that the language is in permanent changing so ways of communication are also changing. The fact is, changes are happening literally before our eyes, because of technological progress. But it's ... normal, completly typical. We are communicate to each other in another way, as our parents did. And this pattern repeting itself, for decades, millenium. There's nothing we can do, we can try, but language is fluent so communication is changing all the time.
ReplyDelete@Ingvar: That’s true. Each and every language is constantly adapting to environment in which it’s used. Nowadays heavy need of instant messaging is excluding possibilities of composing long and polished texts. However observing and accepting the fact of this change is one thing, while assessing whether it’s good or bad trend is another one. That’s why in presentation above I captured my point and my assessment of this situation
DeleteWhat I’m worried about is the fact that our messages are getting more and more simple. I’m not that sure if in few decades majority of people (knowing only VERY simple way of communication) will be able to express and pass over more complex ideas. What do you think about it?
In my opinion, I strongly agree with your point of view about meaningless messages, shortly communication without manners. The ten years ago, I have received letters with beatiful quotations and grammatically correct pronunciation. Know, I can see only follow George Orwell's predictions about change words (dramatically with mistakes! from a lot of viral videos on Youtube).
ReplyDeleteI'm also with Ingvar on this matter about variables our language for new style of communication but we should take care of vocabulary range and polite meanings.
@Magdalena: Happy to hear that you agree with my point of view :) What are George Orwell’s predictions? Can you please share? I’m not familiar with them.
DeleteI'm afraid I have to agree with you. People are meeting out of obligation rather than joy more and more often. Our time has become a scarce commodity, we work longer and have less free time. We expect our meetings to help our career or increase our income. We meet when we have an interest. Unfortunately it’s going to be difficult to repair our communication.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your interesting article. On the one hand I have to agree with you. People don’t care about what they are writing and then when it comes to a real conversation, people prefer to play on phone or show to someone some funny pictures on the Internet, or make a selfie, instead of real honest talk. I think that the next problem of today’s conversations is that people are reading less books, because they are only reading some stupid articles on Facebook, what causes that they have very poor vocabulary. Today all information that we get comes from television or internet, and the problem is that they are very brief. It leads to conversations between people where they can exchange only short, not complicated messages.
ReplyDeleteI can agree with your point of view. Nowadays people "talks" (better word is "writes") just for talking. They treat silence like a something wrong. But it's a bad thinking. Speech is silver, silence is golden! I prefer exchanging real and important informations instead of tons of stupid small talk. Especially, as you say, it's mostly accompanied by terrible spelling mistakes ...
ReplyDeleteThank's for this article. I totally agree with your point of view. Nowadays we communicate completely different. Better? I don't know. It's hard to say when we see people sending all time tons of emoticons, short version of words like OMG, LOL etc. Definitely something gone in the way how we communicate. Something elegant, smart and I thin beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI partly agree with presented article. Of course it is the easiest way to blame new technology, but in my opinion everyone is responsible for what kind of information/messages he want to pass and way how he gonna do this. We can write message full of smileys, but also we can write (when it's possible) full sentence with proper grammar. It is always our choice.
ReplyDeleteI try to check the spelling whenever I can. I don’t send letters, because I have contacts at hand and when I want to send something to my colleague – I send the message not traditional mail. It is faster. Obviously if everyone will stopped using phones, emails etc. I will be sending mails. Unfortunately it probably never will happen. So maybe I’m a little old-fashioned like you – sometimes with my fiancée we send postcards from holidays :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with your presentation, theres a lot missing when it comes to communication nowadays. Its funny how sending someone a letter is now something 'weird' when could have just talked to them over facebook :D
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I see your point but I also agree with s14660, who ever he or she is - pity I don't know your name ;P It's our choice how we use a medium to communicate. I think that people who used to write long, meaningful letters, write "better" mails or text messages. I believe that there always were people who communicate purely even without today's technology. However, I realised that Internet is flooded with so called "lol content" - memes, short youtube videos, gif images. I like them too, but the problem is that many people don't go beyond them. They find a funny picture, share it via FB message with a friend who replies "lol" - and that's it, conversation is over.
ReplyDeleteI agree with You s14660. We are responsible for the quality of the messages we send.
ReplyDeleteI understand linguistic carelessness caused by rush of our lives. I also understand that the sheer volume of work we use mental shortcut and we do not pay attention to the forms of our expression. This should not become our everyday life and when we have the opportunity to leisurely and thoughtfully formulate our statements. It only depends on us in what quality will be our conversations.