Communication is Dead

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so why not share it on my blog, right?! Communication is slowly dying a painful death. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have realized this over the past year or so, but here’s my take on it.

A few years ago, I remember that it was a big deal for most high school students to own a cell phone. I remember because I was one. We all used to talk on the phone (phone being our home phones lines), and that’s what was “cool.” We’d make plans to hang out, or just catch up with friends. Then the era of cell phones came to be. With more carriers on the market, prices were accessible to everyone, and kids started having cell phones. That broke the barrier and changed the way of communication.

First came the notorious text messages. How popular were those?! This was essentially the first step of communication death. Because instead of calling someone, hearing their voice, and sharing a few moments together (the closest to real face-to-face conversation known to humans at the time), we now sent texts. Short messages that often times didn’t even use full words in order to “fit” so we don’t get charged extra. To me, communication has never been the same since.

By 2000, just about everyone had access to the Internet. The boom of AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN messaging services was felt. The cell-phone industry adjusted, quickly putting these services on cell phones. Sure, while one could have a full-fledged conversation online, which was definitely better than texting and came even closer to real communication, it forced people to think differently.

You see, somewhere in this period we lost touch with what’s important. Communication is not just verbal. It’s very much physical. It’s about emotion being shown, facial expressions coming through, a crack of a voice, etc. What I’m trying to say is that 50% of real communication is body language. This never comes through when you’re behind the keyboard of a laptop or a cell phone. The feeling is gone. It’s just plain words popping up on a screen. Words that you can’t often understand as the writer intended you to.

Fast-forward to 2010. MySpace and Facebook completely choked the life out of this communication game. We shortened the text messages to “statuses.” Now it’s not even about being direct with people. It’s about telling the whole world about your life and social experiences. We’re not even communicating directly with each other. We’re just looking at Facebook statuses, pictures, and yes, here and there comments. We make our own judgments (EVERYONE is guilty of this, there’s no hiding that fact) of what people mean and what they are truly trying to say. It’s as if communicating isn’t even the main point. There are all these other things to worry about and deal with. It’s almost like a game.

And if communication wasn’t down to its last breath, there’s Twitter. Now you do what Facebook and MySpace used to do… but in 160 characters or less. And how crazy is Twitter? From CNN and other news networks breaking news in one sentence, to NBA players and other athletes going on their twitter accounts to break news, to the common folk telling the world they are at the gym or they need to poop. That’s the sad reality of where communication is.

Here’s the scary question – what’s the next stage? Can you kill something that’s already dead?

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad these social-networking sites are around, although I do have my bones to pick with them. I’m a user of all three. There are good ways to use them. There’s also a good way to communicate online in 2010 through video chat and the like which makes you feel as if you’re face to face, but the bottom line is that what’s “cool” and “hip” is far from that. It’s being short, indirect, confusing, often annoying, and yes — not communicating.

Here’s hoping for a change!

2 Comments

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  By Joe, February 11, 2010 @ 10:10 pm

  Good entry, Eddie. I have a feeling that as web-based social media evolves we will eventually see two changes in communication. First, we’ll see certain generations aging out of the online social media scene. This is one of the reasons that MySpace has been bleeding members – because a lot of people who started on MySpace are now using Facebook and Twitter (and some are finding that they don’t want to use either one of these either).

  Second, I think that we’ll begin to see a reversion back to basics. In 10 – 15 years, it might not be so uncommon for landline phones to be en vogue. The technology has to improve, though. We need to reach a state where our electric, cable, and communication lines are run underground and thus avoid most of the problems that come with the weather. We need to advance home-based technology into the age of the Jetsons (or at least Back to the Future 2) where we have affordable, quality video phones in the home.

  When that happens, I think communication may begin to revert back to what we now know as “traditional” methods.

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  By Eddie, February 12, 2010 @ 2:12 am

  Thanks for the comment, Joe! I couldn’t agree more. I liked the picture you painted of the future to come. It does seem to me that there’s a general theme here — eventually as human beings, we tend to lose ourselves for a cool minute (for just about anything in life!) until we realize what is going on (this process could take a while!) and then we return to basis, aka what we know best!

  It’s incredible how much communication has changed in my opinion. There are definitely pros and cons to this change. Let’s see what happens 10-15 years from now!

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