Technology’s Earmarks

A recent NY Times piece tackles the idea that something gets lost with our society’s change from phone to email communications.

THE self-knowledge gleaned from a few years’ worth of phone calls is unquantifiable. So it’s unlikely that consultants and organizational learning strategists will pay it much attention. But recently I walked the halls of my old office, and they were cemetery-silent at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. No yelling, no giggling, no breathless appeals, not even a perfunctory “Hello, may I speak to. …”

When the stock market crashed my great uncle Pat was working as switchboard operator at a large hotel in New York City. It amazes me just thinking about what all went into a phonecall. You had to really want to talk to someone, have the patience to likely get disconnected somewhere in your attempts and then have a middleman in the entire process. Now, most of our communications consist of emails that look disjointed and incomplete.

For work I see the benefit of emails, they are an instant paper trail. And I have definitely been guilty of google-ing a person to get their email instead of using the phone number they left. Sometimes I cannot be bothered, and it really seems to me the quickest way to get any point across. The idea of phone tagging one another for a couple days seems silly.

Even with friends, phone conversations are a luxury these days. Different time zones and busy schedules do not make for calling ease. Sometimes I will go months with only email, or even g-chat updates from friends. I do love sending letters, but it’s hard to find time for that lately as well. Skype has become a new best friend of mine, and has allowed me to keep up-to-date on my Lis in London. To see her, and her bright happy shiny apartment is almost to be there and give her a hug. But what is odd is that I know more about what is going on with my friend over the pond than with my friends right here in my own city. Hmm.