Every once in a while I run into another rant on a blog, at a party, in a magazine or newspaper or elsewhere about how the Internet and all it’s newfangled Web 2.0 social media gadgets are hurting and/or destroying good old fashioned genuine human communication and relationships.
To all of that I say hogwash, hooey, pshaw and poppycock!
I don’t want to sound like an impudent buttwhistle, but I tire of listening to otherwise bright people reacting to perfectly handy and efficient ways of communicating, socializing and sharing information in the same way that my great grandparents probably did to the ominous encroachment of the telephone. These days the telephone is touted as the more-genuine-than-thou superior to the cold, soulless upstarts like e-mail, instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and so forth. But the telephone – and even the telegraph before it! – was once the Twitter of its day.
From A Social History of the Media, by Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, an early critique of the lowly telegraph:
What horrid fibs by that electric wire
Are flashed about! What falsehoods are its shocks!
Oh! Rather let us have the fact that creeps
Comparatively by the Post so slow
Than the quiet fudge which like the lightning leaps
And makes us credit that which is not so.
- Punch
In the same book, Orson Wells is quoted as saying of the telephone in 1902: “The businessman may sit at home… and tell such lies as he dare not write.” Indeed, the book points out that this context and sentiment is where we later came by the word “phoney.”
This was not the only line of criticism. The intrusion of the telephone into the home was often under attack, as television was to be decades later.
The inspiration for my current call of horse hoo is a post today, entitled Nothing New About New Media? on the blog of the brilliant Mike Moran. It’s written by Frank Reed. These are a couple of incredibly smart guys who know their way around communication, online and off. (Mike is one of the most gifted speakers I’ve seen; I daresay I think he could keep an all-day conference audience fully engaged at 12:30 PM amid the cacophony of growling stomachs. He’s that good.)
The gist of Frank’s message in the post is this:
I think we are possibly slipping into a Dark Age of sorts regarding communication, where we THINK we communicate more but all we are really doing is talking / writing / yelling / marketing / "you name it" more, without truly communicating.
As much as we want to pat ourselves on the back for all the innovation and technology and progress we surround ourselves with we are not doing anything new at the core here. What I mean is we are simply refining how we communicate.
I have to say, I'm not sure there are a lot of folks out there who are truly savvy about social media that would disagree with what Frank is saying here. I've heard the 'these are all simply ways to communicate' observation many times. That seems fairly obvious to me. What I couldn’t disagree with more, though, is the opinion that these new means of communication are sending us into a Dark Age of sorts regarding communication.
I'm finding these platforms (Twitter, IM, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) a great way to stay in touch with people I've met. I'll run into someone I haven't seen in a couple years and can ask how the home remodel is going, how the newborn is doing and so forth because I'm following them online. It definitely makes me feel closer to them and definitely doesn't detract from the relationship; it enriches it.
Occasionally I run into people at parties or events who I've 'met' online, often through friends, and it's a pleasant surprise to be able to say, "Hey, great to finally meet you in person!" That's happened to me a couple times lately and I've gone on to strike up great 'offline' personal and professional relationships with these people.
As for my circle of closer friends, these same technologies help me meet up with them for a last-minute happy hour or be reminded that their birthday is coming up – in which case I may just kick it old school and send them a slice of a tree, delivered on a fossil fuel-burning truck, via the Post. And I’m not trying to be a green bean here: I love getting postal mail, but the reality is that pushing some ones and zeros down the Interweb pipes leaves a smaller footprint than a Hallmark card – and it’s instantaneous. But go ahead and send me a card anyway. I’m a sentimental softie for that stuff.
I get what Frank is saying and I definitely experience moments when I’m inclined to agree with him wholeheartedly. There are a good many people who are in sore need of finding a better balance between their online and offline time. But that’s for them to decide. Just as it’s not for me to tell them they need more or less fiber in their diets. Odds are, I probably don’t hang out with a lot of the ‘I’m cool ‘cuz I have 1,024 + friends on Facebook’ crowd. I’m much more at home with the folks for whom it’s as obvious as it is to me that these are all just new ways to communicate – and are using them to do exactly that.
And by the way; where did I find this article? In a Tweet from Mike Moran linking to the blog post by Frank Reed. I’d say that’s about as new as New Media gets – and I like it.
