Everything new is old again

It's been a while since I have blogged, but things have been pretty busy. Reviewing my past posts, I have noticed that most of my blogging seems to key in on communication issues. So this one should come as no surprise-

Our communication devices have advanced to the point that we are going back to the days of the telegraph.

I first observed this a few years back with a teen aged son of a friend of mine. He and a buddy were standing next to each other texting each other back and forth. And not talking or looking at each other. I have seen it with my own children and I am starting to recognize it in the work place.

With the technology advances in today's workplace, we don't have to do as much face to face communication as we used to. Desktop support organizations can exist virtually anywhere, telecommuting has made office time optional and the untapped potential of the 'cloud' has made bull pens and meeting rooms obsolete.

But where has that led us? What I see is a degradation of communication skills and a bunch of people living in their encapsulated world where they can control the conduits of communication.

We now have a bunch of folks essentially yelling at each other and no one interacting or conversing with one another. Inflection and tone have surrendered to the emoticon. Context has become a lost cause and along with it brevity. The text message is the equivalent of the telegraph - I can't respond to you until the message is sent and I have to put special instructions in the message for it to be interpreted correctly (STOP).

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