Mis/communication

I recently attended a class held via a phone call where the professor was in HK and the student were listening through speakerphone. After the novelty of it wore off, it got me thinking how communications technology has taken us so far. And farther away from each other.

Communication has been made a whole lot easier by technology, as everyone is now just a click of a button away, but at the cost of the personal touch - literally and figuratively speaking. After the joy of finding old friends over Facebook.com, we add them to our list of people we neglect to keep in touch with, thinking, "Ah, I'll contact her some other time. I'm busy," and then we forget about it.

Without the face-to-face element, it's easy to take statements out of context. Where communication is without personal touches like facial expressions or tone of voice, some nuances are muddled, like sarcasm, humor, or affection. A friend may jokingly text, "I'm gonna kill you." By the Rules on Electronic Evidence, this may be used against the sender when the friendship has turned sour, and the friend is found dead. But that's just me inserting a law-related topic.