Ability to communicate through text has become a lot more important.
Pre-telephone, there was an era of correspondence by mail, but the skills are a little different, I think—by mail, it’s important to remember what’s going on over days or weeks, and now it isn’t.
Ability to communicate through text has become a lot more important.
Agreed. Though some people seem not to have gotten the memo.
I am much better at communicating through text than speech. That sometimes gives me issues at work. I’ll write up something as clearly as possible, email it to someone, and they will then walk around to my desk and say, in essence: “I can’t be bothered to read that and would prefer to spend more time getting it in a less coherent form, and also interrupt whatever you’re doing.” It drives me up the wall. And this is from IT people, who should know better.
I would like to blame the culture of phone messaging and twitter for getting people discombobulated whenever they encounter more than a few lines of text, but I’m actually not sure what the cause is. Maybe it’s just me.
A charitable explanation for this would be that people are unaccustomed to well written documents and so are more confident with their interrogation skills than your writing skills. Even with a well written document, the reader will need to get into the mindset of the writer, which requires effort. Whereas interviewing the writer allows the writer to share some of the mental effort for bridging the gap.
Several uncharitable explanations leap to mind as well, but they don’t seem helpful here.
This is interesting, because to me it naturally seems that communicating through speech face-to-face is far superior to text communication. It’s the only way to read tonality in a voice as well as body language, which gives a lot of insight into the person’s relationship to the material they’re communicating. It’s faster to shoot quick follow-up questions back and forth (and again, by seeing their response you can see if you’re asking the right questions). And the face time can also be used to build rapport and strengthen relationships with the person you’re talking to.
To put it another way, communicating through speech is much higher bandwidth.
Granted, I’m not as eloquent when I’m speaking as when I can take the time to compose something, and if you need to have a record of the conversation then text is clearly superior. But I’m surprised you take anything else as an affront.
To put it another way, communicating through speech is much higher bandwidth.
Agreed that speech has higher bandwidth; but (to me at least) it seems to also have a much lower signal to noise ratio.
But I’m surprised you take anything else as an affront.
I don’t, in general. Circumstances matter and I don’t find people talking to me offensive in itself, even though it’s not my preferred form.
I do take it as an affront when I go to considerable effort to be clear about something important, to answer possible questions, to describe alternative options, and the recipient says, in essence: “tl;dr.” This forces me to pay the mental cost of articulation twice, for a worse result, and interrupts whatever else I was doing at the time. The effect is especially bad in my profession because many computer tools do not lend themselves to precise verbal description, and a misheard command can be the difference between getting the expected outcome and ending up with a completely hosed system. This sort of thing is why I say IT folks should know better. I think doctors write down prescription instructions for about the same reason. Small mistakes matter. Heading them off is often the explicit reason I’m communicating in writing in the first place.
Similarly, I find that people often insist on communicating information by phone, when the same information could be conveyed by email more quickly, without interrupting other activities on the recipient’s end, in a form which leaves a convenient lasting record which can be referred back to as necessary. In fact, I often find people trying to contact me on the phone even when the advantages of email are so pronounced that they’re effectively forced to send a followup email restating what they already said on the phone, in the form they should have put it in originally had they not felt compelled to waste both of our time first.
Ability to communicate through text has become a lot more important.
Pre-telephone, there was an era of correspondence by mail, but the skills are a little different, I think—by mail, it’s important to remember what’s going on over days or weeks, and now it isn’t.
Agreed. Though some people seem not to have gotten the memo.
I am much better at communicating through text than speech. That sometimes gives me issues at work. I’ll write up something as clearly as possible, email it to someone, and they will then walk around to my desk and say, in essence: “I can’t be bothered to read that and would prefer to spend more time getting it in a less coherent form, and also interrupt whatever you’re doing.” It drives me up the wall. And this is from IT people, who should know better.
I would like to blame the culture of phone messaging and twitter for getting people discombobulated whenever they encounter more than a few lines of text, but I’m actually not sure what the cause is. Maybe it’s just me.
A charitable explanation for this would be that people are unaccustomed to well written documents and so are more confident with their interrogation skills than your writing skills. Even with a well written document, the reader will need to get into the mindset of the writer, which requires effort. Whereas interviewing the writer allows the writer to share some of the mental effort for bridging the gap.
Several uncharitable explanations leap to mind as well, but they don’t seem helpful here.
[deleted—responded to the wrong post]
This is interesting, because to me it naturally seems that communicating through speech face-to-face is far superior to text communication. It’s the only way to read tonality in a voice as well as body language, which gives a lot of insight into the person’s relationship to the material they’re communicating. It’s faster to shoot quick follow-up questions back and forth (and again, by seeing their response you can see if you’re asking the right questions). And the face time can also be used to build rapport and strengthen relationships with the person you’re talking to.
To put it another way, communicating through speech is much higher bandwidth.
Granted, I’m not as eloquent when I’m speaking as when I can take the time to compose something, and if you need to have a record of the conversation then text is clearly superior. But I’m surprised you take anything else as an affront.
Agreed that speech has higher bandwidth; but (to me at least) it seems to also have a much lower signal to noise ratio.
I don’t, in general. Circumstances matter and I don’t find people talking to me offensive in itself, even though it’s not my preferred form.
I do take it as an affront when I go to considerable effort to be clear about something important, to answer possible questions, to describe alternative options, and the recipient says, in essence: “tl;dr.” This forces me to pay the mental cost of articulation twice, for a worse result, and interrupts whatever else I was doing at the time. The effect is especially bad in my profession because many computer tools do not lend themselves to precise verbal description, and a misheard command can be the difference between getting the expected outcome and ending up with a completely hosed system. This sort of thing is why I say IT folks should know better. I think doctors write down prescription instructions for about the same reason. Small mistakes matter. Heading them off is often the explicit reason I’m communicating in writing in the first place.
Looks to be a subtype of the general observation that whoever can establish her authority in an argument wins.
I think some people find it easier to focus on voice than text, and/or they just want to feel reassured that someone is paying attention to them.
Similarly, I find that people often insist on communicating information by phone, when the same information could be conveyed by email more quickly, without interrupting other activities on the recipient’s end, in a form which leaves a convenient lasting record which can be referred back to as necessary. In fact, I often find people trying to contact me on the phone even when the advantages of email are so pronounced that they’re effectively forced to send a followup email restating what they already said on the phone, in the form they should have put it in originally had they not felt compelled to waste both of our time first.
Along with this, I guess that ability to communicate over the phone is becoming less relevant, having been useful for <150 years.