Why We Don't Communicate Well Anymore
The history of human communication began in person.1 Even as writing progressed from cave paintings to papyrus to the printing press, oral communication still remained the dominant mode of conversation. We developed technology to simulate these in-person exchanges at a distance. Telephones appeared in homes and businesses. Now we have videos to accompany the sounds of voices, but fundamentally, it extends the same tradition of oral conversation.
Unsurprisingly, habits, customs, and social norms reflect this medium. Eye-contact, facial reactions, and an assortment of “mmhmm” and “sure” sounds verify active listening. We have learned to perceive tone of voice and other non-verbal evidence of emotion and intent.
From these customs and norms, manners emerged. Interruptions are rude, stopping what we’re doing to focus on a speaker is polite, and late-night/early-morning phone calls are taboo. This all makes sense in a world focused on conversations with our voices. But that is no longer how many conversations occur.
Conversational Typing
If conversations are now asynchronous2 text exchanges (we can send another message without awaiting a response), we no longer think about interrupting people when we reach out. They also do not consider whether or not they’re interrupting us.3
Almost every digital communication interrupts another conversation, work, task, thought, sleep, podcast, or cat video. On some level, with every text, email, DM, tag, ping, or alert, we are straying from a social norm that has endured for thousands of years.
As a result, we’re lost, overwhelmed, and generally irritated. The previous guidelines no longer apply. We wouldn’t call a friend at midnight, but might text.4 New technology develops faster than new norms.
The Brave New World
Now we awaken to notifications of messages missed while we slept. A phone call in the middle of the night once conveyed something dire. Even now, witching hour phone calls are typically reserved for deaths and incarcerations. But every morning, we begin our day by assessing what we’ve already missed, at which point, we’re reacting rather than thinking.5 We don’t set boundaries, respect boundaries, or even consider them.
Even worse, we integrate all of this technology, so our text messages appear on our laptops and our earbuds connect to every device. Failure to respond to messages costs social standing or conveys indifference, and that means email, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.6
So we miscommunicate our expectations constantly.
Our conversational patterns are often unrecognizable. A one-word answer can be acceptable in one context, an insult in another, and those two contexts are often indistinguishable. Do emojis help or hinder understanding? Sure, the most common incendiary discussions refer back to the pandemic or culture wars, but misuse of emojis isn’t far behind.
The Future
We are optimists, long-term thinkers, and futurists. Technology allows connection to distant family and friends. It allows a team across multiple continents to develop extraordinary software for clients and skunkworks.
Technology accelerates, and we believe it can increase human agency. We believe that eventually, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) will allow direct communication between humans and machines and of course, humans and other humans.
We believe in overcommunication. We share potential risks long before they metastasize into project-killing problems. We engage clients early and often when things are going well and even more often when they aren’t. We keep everyone on the team informed, even when that extra message feels like it might be redundant. When in doubt, we communicate. Transparency is critical. Slack, emails, are required tools of the trade.
But we also recognize that everyone needs some digital boundaries. We encourage folks to share when they are less likely to respond based on work schedules and geography. When we inevitably, unintentionally violate someone’s personal preferences, we acknowledge, apologize, and learn.
We err on the side of kindness, since a recipient in a digital conversation can easily misinterpret intention. Millenia spent interpreting tone and nonverbal cues cannot help, so we must help ourselves. A conscious effort to be kind decreases the probability of being rude.
Practicing kindness in disagreements, steelmanning and yes-anding the best-possible interpretation of another argument, and showing some grace for electronic miscommunications would be a fair place to start. The “Gottman ratio” refers to the ratio of positive to negative interactions and/or the number of “bids” (requests for attention) which we turn towards, rather than away. Enough negative experiences, and our perceptions solidify and negative sentiments override everything, anger amasses, and it’s a giant black hole of disdain and disgust. Enough positive experiences, and one earns the benefit of the doubt, the positive emotion builds, strengthening with each interaction.
One day, BCI will improve our transcription fluency and ideas will be transmitted seamlessly without conversation or difficulty interpreting. For now, we can be mindful of the fact that we’re strangers in a strange digital land where our old norms and patterns do not apply.
A little mindfulness, a little empathy, and some overcommunication of preferences will go a long way.
1 Grunts, nods, threats of a club to the cranium, etc.
2 For web developers having flashbacks about race conditions, I promise to desist…or wait, maybe I don’t?
3 In the history of text exchanges, letters could sit unopened for days. Cave paintings can sit unanswered for millenia. How long can a text message sit idly without offense?
4 Implication: if you didn’t turn off notifications before turning off the lights, that’s on you!
5 Studies suggest that 62% of smartphone users reach for that phone immediately after waking and almost 80% within 15 minutes. This is almost assuredly a bad idea, and an argument in favor of keeping the phone far away from the bed in which you sleep!
6 But if you respond immediately, you aren’t important enough, busy enough, or otherwise just seem desperate for approval and attention.