Human Communication and Technology

Human Communication and Technology


Technology has made the world very small, brought everyone closer than ever before. We have seen and experienced amazing benefits of technology; however, we still have people (mainly from pre-internet revolution era) who do not find technology as a boon. Is it just their resistance to change or is there really something they know is left behind in technology’s race? Let’s find out…

Technology has brought information sharing at very fast paced and easily available platform. Basically it is helping Human Beings communicate faster than before. Usually Quantity and Quality go inversely proportional as a general rule. So are we losing on quality of communication in rush of communicating fast?

To answer this we need to understand what Communication is and further what does quality of communication mean. We understand that Human beings use their 5 senses to capture information which is stored as experience. More the input from each of the senses, better is the experience recorded. However, not always all 5 senses contribute to information gathering, during times like these missing information (from non-contributing senses) is taken from similar experiences in past and recorded as new experience memory. I will elaborate a little more on this by few examples going ahead.

Communicating is exchange of information or say exchange of experiences between Human Beings. Precise communication would mean transferring the experience to receiver exactly as experienced by sender. For an example if I loved muffin from a cake shop and I would like to communicate my experience to my friend, the best way is to take my friend there and help experience the same. The texture, the aroma, the crisp chewing sound inside mouth (that mostly only you can hear), the softness and the taste everything put together leaves an Experience in memory. Well, to compare if this experience was better than other past experiences is a different point of discussion. However, limiting our subject matter to communication, the experience is best communicated here in muffin case.

In the content above in this article, I have mentioned about communication in absence of information from few senses. Highlighting on the same, we all use books to communicate (transfer information). While reading a novel, the visualisation of the story is different for different people and depends upon their actual visuals from past Experiences of similar type. The challenge for author is to describe the story so well, that almost all the readers record the story as same experience in their memory. All the missing information from non-contributing senses should be replaced by almost identical ones from past experiences for readers to complete the current experience of story and record it.

While we speak of technology boosting communication, it is merely sharing information that is received by few senses and not all. While we read a text, it is as good as listening in your own voice, so we miss on visual cues (expressions & body languages) and also the audible cues of tone, volume and intensity of communication. No wonder while we put Smileys (representing facial expressions) along with text, the message is better conveyed.


Concluding and summarising my thought process on ‘Human Communication and Technology’, while we embrace technology we also should be aware that the communication is not complete. My grandma is not wrong when she says my generation doesn’t know how to communicate, she has learnt experience sharing (communicating) in much more ‘Qualitative’ way than me. However, since we know that advance to technological era is inevitable, the efforts should be on ‘How to Communicate’, the efforts should be on conscious attempt to give precise elaboration of information from missing senses used in communicating. Technology still has a long way to go to help us communicate as qualitatively as our grandparents…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human Time

Human Time Clocks measure other clocks, they don’t measure Time… I heard this in a movie and it totally makes sense. Let’s discuss how…. Let’s look at an example. Consider a rose garden which has a giant wheel next to it. If someone was to keep a track and calculate no. of roses grown, flourished and died (completed cycle) when the giant wheel completed 100 rounds, the report would show highly varied rose cycles per 100 giant wheel cycles, wouldn’t it? Near the rose garden there is also a hotel. If someone was to keep a track of no. of giant wheel cycles completed per 100 customers served (came to hotel, ate and left); i.e. giant wheel cycle per 100 customers served cycle, the report would again show varied no. of giant wheel cycles, wouldn’t it? A river flows by the hotel and that same person also tried keeping a track of no. of customers served per 100 litres of water flowing… Well again the ratio wouldn’t be consistent, isn’t it? All of these cycles don’t...
Read more

Analytics in People Science is Ostrich with head in sand

Image
Analytics in People Science is Ostrich with head in sand Analytics driving precision in prediction and control has been immensely successful in proving its effectiveness across various fields of science and study, almost every. Hence, the obvious tendency to look at and aim for analytics or artificial intelligence to act as guiding path on achieving predictability leading to control over people behaviour. However, people science is different from other, so called, ‘materialistic science’. ‘Enlightenment Effect’, a term from organisational behavioural science which describes how different patterns or theories observed and identified about people behaviour instantly change the behaviour. Elaborating briefly, if we are to observe a group of people and share details about their behaviour patterns observed, as soon as they become ‘aware’ of the patterns, those patterns are either avoided or amplified depending upon the ‘values’ of individuals and group as a whole. In either cas...
Read more

Negotiation – An un-boon to exponentially flourishing relationships/organisations

Image
Negotiation – An un-boon to exponentially flourishing relationships/organisations When you’re good at something, never do it for free… Joker, The Dark Knight Sounds like a really smart statement to get the most possible in a trade, isn’t it? Ofcourse I share a different perspective… I would rather rephrase it as ‘When you’re good at something, it is the least you can do for free…’ The basic belief in what people are deep with-in is the distinction here… ‘Smart Negotiator’ is someone well renowned on giving least possible to gain maximum possible in a trade. Someone who understands how to reach an agreement which eventually ends up with bigger share of the pie for themselves. There are many ways of doing this; convincing with facts and logic making the deal look a win-win situation, using power driving fear or authority driving rewards. Infact Negotiation in itself is an act to articulate and cap the input and output from a relationship. It is derived f...
Read more