Talking is definitely not the only mean of communication. With today's modern technology, we can cross the ocean in a matter of hours in a plane as compared to the past when we took months to travel on ship. Likewise today, with these changes, we sometimes do not have to talk to communicate and talking might not even be the MOST effective means of communication.
Letters, E-mails, Skype, MSN Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), WhatsApp. These are some of the familiar platforms we use today to communicate with our friends and colleagues. This list also shows the improvement in the speed, quality and (maybe) effectiveness of how we communicate today. In the past when calls are expensive, we pen down our thoughts and messages in letters. When the Internet technology gets better with time, we send E-mails. With the improvement of mobile technologies, we mobile messengers like the BBM and WhatsApp. From such, we can observe that with such technological shifts, talking to convey messages actually gets a little obsolete. Because, talking (calling) requires one to pick up the dialer, dial, wait for response and then send the message. This takes up too much time! With BBM and WhatsApp, functions such as mass messaging is possible. For instance, a Manager of a team can send an instruction to his/her team of possibly 10 people with a mass messenger service, and can save the hassle of calling all 10 people of the team individually. In our competitive world, this is Effective Communication.
However said so, I still believe that talking is still the fundamental to all communications. In certain avenues, talking is still important. For instance, during a job interview, I'm sure the boss of a company would still prefer to have an interview in person rather than over Skype or MSN. Also it will not be effective if a counselor was to do his job over the phone. Talking in person brings about a certain kind of intimacy between the participants of the conversation. In such cases, only talking would bring out the effectiveness of the job.
Now with the understanding that different platforms of communications has its own pros and cons. It is then up to the sender of a conversation to decide which avenue is best suited for the type of conversation he/she wants to give. Upon deciding, the sender must ensure that there is no ambiguity in the content he is giving. With that, only then we can ensure effective communication.
Talking is indeed a very important form of communication, but I feel that given the available forms of communication nowadays, written communication is becoming the norm. Besides that, many people apply the spoken form of their messages directly to their written ones. This causes a lot of confusion and ridicule among their audiences.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting discourse on the various modern-day channels of communication. At the end of the day, however, we mustn't forget that there are still thinking, feeling human beings at the other end and that the technology is just the means to an end :))
ReplyDeleteI agree that talking is still one of the most important means of communication; awesome conclusion. When you mentioned interview, it set me thinking.
ReplyDeleteWe often talk or describe one way of communicating, but have we considered how different means of communication, and even NVC, can work together to enhance the outcome of a situation? I think it's worth researching into, to see which forms of communication work most harmoniously well together.