Modern Communication: Myth or Minefield?

For hundreds of millennia, homo sapiens stumbled along with no means of communicating other than face to face. As a result, it is estimated that only seven percent of communication involves words. Facial expression, posture, gesture and tone of voice all contribute to understanding.  About four thousand years ago, we invented writing, stripping over ninety percent of the meaning from communication. This invention did not impact the bulk of humanity until early in the twentieth century, when improved literacy made snail mail a reasonable alternative to the spoken word.

Communication has gone much further downhill since then. In today’s world, we are inundated with options, and these have created new barriers to communication, because different people make different choices. Nowadays, to ensure my communications are even received by friends, I have to know their preferences with regard to texting, voicemail, email, video calling, old fashioned phone calling, and favored social networking sites.

One problem, which I’ve named Access Synchronization Syndrome, centers around the responsibility of contactees to add meaning to a communication based on its form. This can be a heavy burden if you have a large number of friends and frequently leads to misunderstanding. Here, from personal experience, is an example:

The other day, I was hip deep in a complex internet investigation on the maximum penalty difference between petty and grand theft felony in Washington and Oregon states -  just research for the book, honestly - when my phone rang. I usually let calls go to voicemail when I’m writing, but in this case, caller ID showed the cell number of a friend whose communication preference is emailing via her Blackberry.  She never calls outright. I decided whatever she wanted to tell me had to be critical, along the lines of having just broken both arms after falling downstairs, and my number was the first one she could scroll to on her Blackberry with her nose. I answered the call and here’s how our conversation went:

Me: Hey! What’s up.

Friend: Check your email.

Me:  I’ve got a dozen browser windows open here. Can you hang on a minute?

Friend: (silence)

Me: Hello?

Friend: (silence) 

Me: (looking at phone screen) She hung up.  

Because she’d opened the conversation with “check your email” as opposed to “I fell downstairs and broke both arms”, I wasn’t overly concerned.  When I abruptly terminate a telephone conversation, it’s always because my thumb has accidentally hit the poorly placed camera button on my cell phone and I’ve inadvertently taken a picture of my left hand.  I assumed something like this had happened to her and waited for a call back.

After waiting five minutes or so, my assumptions became darker. For example: her phone might be out of service because she’d been hit  by a bus and exsanguinations from her mangled body were now decorating an intersection downtown. This and other gory possibilities kept me occupied for another five minutes, until it occurred to me - maybe she knew I only check emails once a day and wanted to share time sensitive information via her preferred method,  which proved to be the case.

The Rube Goldberg quality of this anecdote illustrates another aspect of Access Synchronization Syndrome. Only in the modern world is it necessary to employ one form of communication to inform someone you've used another.

The second problem I’d like to bring to your attention is one I’ve named Frustrating Unwanted Crossover Knowledge. It is created when one’s friends participate in different social networking circles and/or have multiple online personas. Here again is a real life example:

I have a Facebook friend, we’ll call him A, who is, as far as I know, still married to B. I’ve never met B and she is not my Facebook friend, but she is a friend of a friend, so I know what she looks like. Recently, I took out a membership at PlentyOfFish - just research for the second novel, honestly – a social networking site that is much more up front with personal information.  My research required me to be a lesbian, and I set up my profile accordingly.  About once a week PlentyOfFish sends me an email about new matches, and it turns out B was smart enough to use a pseudonym, but not smart enough to change her face. She used the same picture on her PlentyOfFish profile as she used on her Facebook profile.

This is definitely a case of too much information. I am now forever barred from traveling to where A and B  and live. I can’t risk running into them at a restaurant. Not that B would recognize me, I used a pseudonym too, and put up a profile picture of someone I know is dead, just that, if we ever talked face to face and the 93% non-verbal communication kicked in, I couldn’t keep her secret.  

This is why I believe communication was better when all we had to know about someone was their home address and telephone number.  Maybe we had fewer options back then, but on the plus side, we never had to cross whole cities off our vacation lists.

Addendum:

I just got an e-mail from PlentyOfFish telling me they changed my password, because a hacker told them (s)he had access to their data, and advising me to change my password on any other site where I used the same one.  I doubt this is of much comfort to those whose personal and financial information is now in the hands of criminals, and am very glad I used a fake email account to set up my research.

A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from a friend advising me her partner’s e-mail had been hacked and if I received a request for money from him, to please ignore it.

I’m not saying the two are connected. I’m pretty sure they’re not, given what I know of my friend and her partner. But following this co-incidence, I am now convinced modern communication is not a myth. It’s a minefield.