
The growth of non-vocal communication - rndn
http://attentiv.com/we-dont-speak/
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ineedtosleep
From personal experience as someone who's had a computer since around 8 years
old (and is nearing 30), I have to say that I've learned to speak more
confidently, especially in less-than-ideal situations; however, I will always
be able to communicate better through text.

I've noticed this is mostly the trend with people around my age as we were
raised during the era where instant messaging blew up. Nearly all of my
extremely intense, extra personal conversations with my friends (who I have
known since elementary/middle school) were through IM. Part of me thinks this
was due to SMS costs being extremely high, but I digress.

When we hang out in person, it was only to talk about school, video games,
cartoons, jokes, etc., but when it came time to air out the overstuffed
emotional closet, it was always through IM. Sure, it would sometimes bleed
over to the "physical" world and much more detail would come out through
actual physical interaction, but the conversations would always start with
text on a screen.

That said, I feel that actual speech has sort of become a facade to actual
"conversation". Especially in cases where one's in an unfamiliar environment
(meeting someone new, attempting to speak in a different mode of speech,
etc.), we all seem to just recite a script as if it's a weird vocal handshake
to show that you're a normal human being. Conversations through text removes
so much of the external factors that just increase noise and I believe it's a
much purer, higher quality form of conversation.

[Sorry, that became kind of ranty. This was part of an enjoyable paper I wrote
during undergrad.]

~~~
socceroos
I think that the primary effect of eConversations is that you get closer to
the brain's raw consciousness. You skip past the social lessons you learnt as
a child and go straight to a stream from the brain. It's far more volatile.

'Pure', in this context, takes a slightly different form.

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dstyrb
Why are half of the charts missing axis labels?

Figure 1 is completely non-essential and just repeats the prior sentence in
huge text.

Figure 2 I guess is "percentage of people doing once per day" from the
following sentence, which does not reference the chart and uses different
numbers than the chart.

Figure 3 pyramid plot seems like a fairly suboptimal visualization choice
usually reserved for abstract hierarchies like human needs, not for trends and
percentages because it has no numeric information.

Figure 4 should read "Total Number of Worldwide Internet Users (In Billions)",
the growth would be the derivative of this plot (which actually would have
some cool features from 2013-2015 and 2005-2009 that I would be interested in
knowing about).

Nothing is technically wrong with Figure 5, however I immediately question
numbers like 71,727,551, rounding them is more professional. Also a nice touch
would be to have the names drawn on the pie slices, instead of using a legend.

No clue what Figure 6 means. In the world? In the USA? In a specific age
group? The next sentence talks about Millenials...

Most of the time the text has little or nothing to do with the associated
graphic.

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pshc
If you're going to monologue, I'll take a blog post over a speech any day. But
if we need to work out details, let's get conference chairs. If we're planning
a party, online will do. Once we're hanging out, we'd better be in the same
room.

So long as you get out enough, I think this is fine. When you're doing
something rational, online written communication is great--you omit all those
distracting interpersonal protocols and focus on the issue at hand.

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jasode
I probably do 1/10th the amount of phone calls than 15 years ago. Overall, the
trend of less communication by speech has improved my overall quality of life.

That said, the advantages of text-vs-talk depends on the relationship.

There are certain people that I prefer to keep in 100% text mode. When they
call, their chats have little substance. My mind wanders and I wish they would
get to the point. Since most can't touch type, if they are forced to
communicate by email or SMS text, _they are succinct and get to the point!_.
Technology is a beautiful thing.

But there are also others who I wish I had more frequent chats with. They have
humour that makes me laugh and their upbeat tone doesn't translate into text.
But they are busy with families, etc and so we've settled into twice-a-year
catch up sessions.

Overall, I still prefer text over speech. I remember that there were old
articles decades ago lamenting that _" we used to write long form letters to
each other and the new fangled phone has killed that off."_ Back then, there
was a value judgement in that letters were somehow "better" than phones.

~~~
Sven7
The amount of time it took to get a letter across the country/world also made
a difference to their signal to noise ratio. It especially comes across in the
letters written by thoughtful people.

You could compare it to speech making or say a TED talk. The speaker knows she
has one shot to make a mark, so a lot more effort goes into it. And it ends up
leaving a mark.

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rrss1122
I'd be interested in learning the reasons for this trend. Vocal communication
seems more efficient than text. There's no pauses between what you say and
what the other person says.

I wonder if that could be a reason for the decline of speaking on the phone...

~~~
civilian
It's not more efficient if the other person is just rambling at you.

As someone who's a good listener and doesn't like to interrupt people, this is
a great reason to have digital communication. I can ignore your blathering. If
we're doing an IRL 1:1 I'm going to slowly get more frustrated at your run-on
thoughts.

If anyone has any tips for how to convey "Yes, I got the message, move on to
the next thing you were going to say or stop talking." firmly &
diplomatically, I'd love to hear it. It's been a lifelong struggle.

~~~
alexashka
You're basically people-pleasing.

This is because you don't have the ability to replace the people you feel the
need to please at your expense, with people you can have a reciprocal
relationship with.

I'd say people are in this situation to some extent (and most people their
whole lives, let's be honest :)) until they get high enough in their career
and maturity to have enough power to have others cater to them and not vice
versa.

Not cater in the sense that you abuse them and they can't abuse you but in
terms of you having the wisdom to establish largely mutually-beneficial
relationships and cut out the ones that aren't - win-win.

I'd say almost nobody younger than 30 has the ability or the wisdom to do
this. As long as you are learning and becoming more and more independent, both
financially and 'spiritually', then it'll be fine in due time.

If you're not doing that, you most likely bitch and moan to others as means of
therapy and guess what, they don't wanna hear it either, they're thinking 'yes
I got the message, move on', except you can't move on because you're not
moving anywhere really :)

ps. What most people do is limit the amount of interaction they have with one
another - you bitch to me for an hour a week and I bitch to you a similar
amount. That way we both get to de-stress while not overwhelming one another.
:P

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tubasaur
From the tone of TFA, this seems to be presented as a problem. If that's the
case, why is it a problem? Is written communication somehow inferior to
verbal?

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moneytide
Theres a reason that a common depiction of an alien is hairless humanoid
without a mouth. Devolve the traits that are no longer necessary.

