Seems it should go without saying, but in this new world of technological wizardry, of AI, virtual reality, deep fake photos, avatars and animojis, where Dick Tracy watches are now a reality, and where communications have been reduced to “txt speak”… face to face and even voice to voice interaction is becoming more and more rare.
Our house has a number of floors. The other day I received a txt message from my wife, who was a couple of floors apart from me, reminding me of something. On one hand this saved her having to either climb several flights of stairs or yell at the top of her lungs to get her message across. On the other, without any tone/voice inflection to the communication, with no body language to see, there were several ways I could have interpreted what she was asking. From how soon I was supposed to get this done to whether there were other options, to any clarification I may have needed or questions that I might have had …you get the idea.
In a 1974 Harvard Business Review article, I was first exposed to the concept of “the monkey on your back.” It describes how one person can transfer a problem (the monkey) off his or her own shoulders and make it his supervisor/manager’s problem. Quoting from the article…
“Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall and that he notices one of his subordinates, Jones, coming his way. When the two meet, Jones greets the manager with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see….” As Jones continues, the manager recognizes in this problem the two characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates gratuitously bring to his attention. Namely, the manager knows (a) enough to get involved, but (b) not enough to make the on-the-spot decision expected of him. Eventually, the manager says, “So glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it, and I’ll let you know.” Then he and Jones part company.”
What just happened? The monkey got transferred from the subordinate to the manager.
Email, voicemail, texting…these technological ‘solutions’ represent the ultimate in monkey-transferring. How many times have your heard, when asking for an update on an assignment you’ve given someone, “I sent him an email.” How many times have you sent a text message to someone and found yourself irritated when you didn’t get an immediate response? And when was the last time a person actually answered a phone when you had a question in lieu of entering voice-mail-jail? Monkeys are jumping all over the place!
Some of the other effects technology is having on interpersonal communication and relationships:
Superficiality: Some things simply cannot be communicated in a 140 character ‘tweet’ (now, I gather it’s 280 – big whoop!)
Constant Distraction: I’ll address the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) phenomenon in another post, but we’ve all seen what eyes pressed on little screens has done to threaten, perhaps even eliminate concentrating on any one thing. It’s the high-tech equivalent of trying to have a conversation with someone as their eyes dart around the room.
Lack of Privacy: there’s a price to pay for “free”. For example, to get ‘free email’, we give up our privacy. We allow the email service providers access to our communications. The ability of one person to talk in confidence with another goes out the window with technology.
Isolation: everyone has seen how people hide behind technology both creating false impressions of themselves or others, or simply “lurking”, i.e. observing what others are saying and doing. Why actually talk with other people when you can interact with them without every leaving your locked room?
Depersonalization: this is the ultimate “dis” (short in popular culture lingo for disrespect). By avoiding human interaction and communication one is thumbing one’s nose (I can think of another way of saying this using a hand gesture) at anyone and everyone with whom they interact. The lack of direct communication between tech users displays the ultimate disregard for others, i.e. people.
Instead of the pejorative “I’ll have my people get in touch with your people,” soon we’ll be saying, “I’ll have my iPhone get in touch with your iPhone.”
If we are to survive as a civilization, I posit that we will have to restore human to human speech, face to face conversation, and figure out whether we want to remain human, or become human/machine hybrids.
We need to stop hiding behind our technology and start talking to one another again.
People matter.
