My Ever-Shrinking Forms of Communication
Once upon a time, people like me actually talked to each other on the phone or in person and wrote letters to communicate. I remember when a ringing phone meant someone I knew wanted to tell me something. Now, I assume a ringing phone is an annoying telemarketer I need to block or ignore when an unknown number appears on my iPhone or television screen.
In my parents’ era, letters were a huge deal. They wrote over 400 of them to each other when my father was in the army during World War II.
Phone calls were very expensive, especially long distance, and needed to be short. For quick, important communication, they sent telegrams. Here’s one my mother sent after visiting my father in basic training. It was pretty important, as she was postponing their wedding.
Telegrams were also used for good news like wedding congratulations. When I was married back in 1968, it was customary to read these aloud.
Everything changed sometime in the 1990s when AOL proclaimed, “You’ve got mail.” As the decade progressed, the Internet entered the mainstream and I stopped writing letters and made fewer phone calls. It was so much easier to email people at a time of my choosing. Back then, email was communication between people who knew one another. For me, it was an electronic letter with the same expectations as actual letters. It would be written in complete sentences and the recipient would read it promptly and reply. Awesome.
But as technology advanced, email declined. Somewhere along the line, the rules changed. Punctuation and writing in sentences no longer mattered. Folks might respond, but they might also ignore their email. Communication moved on, first to Facebook and then to Twitter. I never embraced the latter as it was impossible for someone like me to say anything meaningful in 280 characters. Most tweets are even shorter, averaging 34 characters, so they may be retweeted. Now that Twitter is used by our commander-in-chief to make his views and policies known, I think my decision was a wise one. Besides, I wasn’t trying to communicate with tons of people I didn’t know. That’s what Facebook and blog posts are for.
So now we come to texting, the free version of telegrams that my children and grandchildren prefer. It’s fast and will mostly receive a response. But there are rules to texting that I am finally beginning to understand and accept.
- Especially if someone has an Apple watch, don’t expect a response. I can assume she read my text but didn’t have time to respond.
- With all texts, mine may have been buried by several others and thus will be as forgotten as yesterday’s email. So, texts are good mostly for one-way communication of information.
- Keep it really short. As Joe Friday said on Dragnet, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”
- If I need a question answered, just put one in each text. This increases the odds of an answer. Two questions in one text results in only the last one being answered.
It’s hard to believe people’s attention spans are so short and their time so limited that communication has shrunk to the degree it has. But that’s my new reality. Don’t call. No one answers the phone in the moment. Don’t ever leave a message. No one listens to voicemail anymore. Forget emailing. Most emails are ignored. Text but don’t expect a response. Just hope your message was read. What comes next? Maybe I should just grunt.
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