- Talking is a big part of who we are as humans: as families, as business partners — as a society. It's arguably one of the most powerful forms of expression, alongside writing and art. We use our voices to ask questions, to deliver bad news, to tell someone we love them.
But the way we talk to each other is changing. The uniqueness of our voices is being drowned out by the pitter-patter of keyboards; we're always typing, texting, responding.
But according to Aaron Smith, it's not a bad thing.
Hey humanodon I know you're a big fan of phone calls and conversations. What're your thoughts on this? And also, how do you feel about conversational silence?
And in general:
- He notes that sometimes there are things that are hard to tell people in person. Shooting them a text or an email is often just easier,
"Harder" does not mean "worse" or "less appropriate," though. It may mean "worse" from the viewpoint of the person who has to deliver whatever information this would be, but sometimes news must be conveyed that isn't going to be comfortable. By frequently interacting face-to-face, including saying the things that walk a line between "not easy" and "not socially mandated to be an in-person conversation" (like deaths, divorces, break-ups), we learn how to handle, and appropriately convey or receive, the worse news when we need to.
If we rely mostly on phones to communicate, because of "the ease of communication," we are setting ourselves up to flounder when the times comes for an stressful, important, in-person talk.
- We allow mindlessness to take precedence over the insight that strangers — that any of us — can offer each other. We're looking down at our phones when we could be looking up at all there is to see
But this author also falls into the common trap of assuming that before cell phones, people didn't find other ways to distract themselves from reality. Remember those things called newspapers? In my far-gone youth ;) I was never without a book.
Sorry for the late reply. I just got back from spending a week in Nova Scotia with some close friends I hadn't seen in a long while. We used to knock around town and get skunky drunk but mostly this week we just talked and chilled with each other. I find that that's not so common for groups of guy friends, but I loved it and I'm already missing it.
I feel like in person or on the phone, sometimes people tend not to listen to the words, but rather the tone and what they feel the gist is, as filtered through their own perceptions of the person's voice, physical presence, their own physical and emotional state and of course, the relationships in play. That is, we "speak" to each other through all the minutia of our presence when we are face to face or with as much presence as our voice conveys over the phone, which is one reason I'd guess that I love writing so much.
That said, that presence allows us to communicate so much more than we are cognitively able to communicate through the cerebral process of phrasing and diction. A lot of what my friends and I talked about was our memory of who and how we were and who we are and how things are going. What was communicated was the pleasure of each other's company, ideas and sense of humor, how much we missed about how we used to live and our fears and insecurities in the present moment. A lot of things were communicated that were never articulated and sometimes with close relationships, it is hard to just blurt things out, much less figure out how to phrase them, just so. Sometimes a natural break in the conversation fills everything in.
That said, I'm speaking about people I've known for years. People who have seen me falling apart and who can see how I'm trying to fit things together. This is not something a stranger has access to.
Incidentally, I did not have reception or much of an internet connection where I was with my friends. But then, I didn't need to: I had all that human connection I'd been without for a long time while I was hanging with people I hadn't seen in far too long. I didn't realize how much I'd missed our dynamic until I was there. I wonder if a lot of people also go through their day, checking their phones not realizing that what they're really missing is certain people.