nice talk

texting, e-mailing, blogging, facebooking, twittering, live chatting and talking. of those, which is your preferred form of communication? as i sit here and blog i realize that my credibility may be strained, but i am concerned about the role of conversation in the way we run our businesses and lives.

we've become a culture built on real-time. our politicians poll in the morning so they can provide sound bites in the afternoon. we text because we can hear back quickly - even when the other person is in a meeting or somewhere they can't talk. we blog to express ourselves in a monologue. we email because we can cut and paste and make our point without interruption. we chat because it is faceless. To all of these we add emoticons to lend some semblance of emotion. but emoticons aren't honest. if you can't see me, can you tell if i am really :) or :( ?

not many things are as satisfying as a good book. they can make us see worlds and feel emotions that we don't otherwise experience in our lives. but the author isn't there to see our tears or our laughter. it isn't a conversation. and,when the book is done it's done. unless the author recaptures that magic in another offering, the newness is gone.

conversation, whether face-to-face or remote, should remain the cornerstone of human communication. in many respects, it is our ability to use language in all its forms that makes us unique. but the written word is unilateral. it's individual. it's two dimensional. coupled with vocal inflection and body language, conversation is communication in three dimensions.

as much as we may like to believe it, humans are not simply rational beasts. we are emotional. we are complicated. we need conversation and the breadth of the three dimensions of that interaction to really communicate.

i have a business relationship with someone who has expressly removed conversation from his/her communication toolbox. s/he send texts by the hundreds. s/he uses e-mail exhaustively. despite repeated requests to call, s/he refuses. while we all have relationships that can happily exist at that written level, there are many relationships that simply must have the nourishment that comes from conversation.

this relationship has become adversarial in ways that it needn't. a simple conversation on a regular basis could help to ensure that wires don't get crossed. it could iron out bumps that accrete negativity and become boulders. but, with zero verbal communication, the lack of nourishment is killing any prospect for mutual success. it's making me angry and resentful.

so now i sit in a coffee shop and rant in a monologue. i'm not talking to anyone. i have my headphones on as i cut and paste my thoughts into a relatively pointless unilateral discourse. believe me when i say i see the paradox. but, with no one to talk to, i still feel the need to communicate. of course, no one may ever read this entry. but i do feel better.

thanks for the chat. ;-)