Effective Communication dot com

While patiently waiting for inspiration to strike for this blog post, I was mindlessly surfing the internet and chanced upon a quotation by a famous American businessman, Peter F. Drucker. 

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

As I’d read this quote after a thought-provoking discussion in class about the importance of non-verbal communication, I felt rather enlightened by this simple yet powerful statement. And I have to say that I agree fully with Mr Drucker. As many of us know, communication does not just include speech. Communication encompasses many other aspects such as emotion, tone and choice of words, just to name a few. After reading the quote, I started thinking about how communication has been so greatly influenced by technology over the last few decades.

I’m pretty sure that the whole discussion of how technology affects communication has been done to death. However I thought it’d be a pretty interesting topic to bring up for my very first blog post. After all, this in a module about communication, and here I am communicating with the world though this blog with the aid of technology! What strikes me most about technology in communication is that we rarely need to engage each other face-to-face. From sending e-mails, to making VOIP calls, to sending text messages, the importance of physical proximity is declining. With so many conduits of transmitting and receiving information, communication has become so easy, and yet so complex. We can communicate so much faster with a large number of people, but this comes with a price. Without face-to-face interaction, we have relatively little to work with when it comes to reading expressions or reactions that the other party is conveying. In other words, it gets slightly tricky to comprehend non-verbal communication.

Case-in-point: a rather amusing incident happened a few weeks ago. A friend of mine sent me a short joke via a text message. I read the joke (which I found really funny) and replied with a single word—“Hilarious”.
Within seconds, she responded. “It’s ok if you didn’t find it funny. That’s no reason to get sarcastic”. 

I was extremely surprised. I had genuinely felt that her joke was funny and responded so, but she misconstrued my message and thought I was being sarcastic. I called her immediately and explained what had happened, and she told me why she had come to the conclusion that I was being sarcastic. Firstly, I hadn't included a 'LOL' or 'Haha'. Secondly, I did not add a smiling emoticon. Thirdly, I could have added a little more embellishment to my message by telling her why I thought the joke was funny. I'd obviously made the grave mistake of making her misread my non-verbal signals.

I thought the whole incident was rather disturbing. Here I had hurt my friend’s feelings simply because she had misread the tone and emotion behind my response. I then thought to myself how much easier things would have been had she told me the joke to my face. She would then be able to see my reaction with her own two eyes.

I guess I’ve been feeling rather reflective about communication and how we are so dependent on technology to express ourselves. In the world of e-mails, text messages and instant messaging, we no longer need physical proximity nor speech to convey our thoughts and opinions. I guess I'm also feeling this way partly due to the fact that technology is penetrating our lives at a very quick rate, and we will have to be aware of certain etiquettes when we use technology in communication. Furthermore, I will now have to convey my thoughts and feelings on this blog quite regularly, and I hope that I'll be able to express myself clearly and effectively!

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