The Teaching and Research Blog: Technology: Communication ...

My brother and I were talking about technological change yesterday.?How time changes relationships between people! Technologies create more ways of doing and more technologies with which we, the people can have relationships. In general, the more communicative technologies we possess, the more convenient communication becomes and the less relational commitment, the lower the risk, and trust, in communicating.?

For example, about technologies and time in general, with more ways of doing at our disposable, there are, in fact, more distractions in our lives. Indeed, we have more reasons to be less punctual and more ways to convey our lack of punctuality. With mobile phones and instant messaging, we can, in fact, tell someone we will be late, and because we have these means, this gives us more reason to be late, we believe! We de-emphasize the need for punctuality, the importance of committing time and discipline in relationships. Is the trade between relational commitment and relational convenience worth it? That depends on your beliefs, values and assumptions about what is important in human relationships: accessing them; or showing you care about them.?

Communicative technologies can enhance and deepen human relationships by giving us access to relationships and providing different means by which to deepen these relationships. At the same time, they are no substitute for meeting someone in person, to see all that person's eyes, face and body, to hear that person's voice and of course, possibly to feel that person's touch. New technologies cannot replicate well, yet, this primordial, most significant human relationship communicative technology -- the face to face meeting. Perhaps the more we use other communicative technologies, thereby using less this face to face technology, the more shallow our relationship building and communication becomes. We become more superficial in our actions and thoughts if we, our being, are rendered into no more than words, even with emoticons.

Ultimately, myriad communicative technologies reduce the commitment which comes with the face to face encounter. More means to be less punctual. More means by which to make communication less exclusive -- that is, when you meet someone face to face, you should have your interlocutors attention in the same way that your interlocutor has your attention with eye contact, backchanneling and other responses; in contrast, you can instant message twenty people at the same time and likewise, even while video conferencing with someone, you can still do other things, unbeknowst to your partner in fact. Of course, even in face to face encounters, people can let others have a stronger immediate relationship with the technology than the other interlocutor. It may not be strange to see someone talking to another person while the other person is busying typing and staring into a screen. I find that strange and insensible. But maybe this will become more acceptable to me and others as our beliefs, values and assumptions about technology and relationships change -- and chip.?

The great danger for our society is that people grow up using communicative technologies to mediate human relationships without knowing what deep human relationships can be and what they should entail: a generation that texts may not ever appreciate how instant messaging during, at and for dinner is not a substitute for meeting someone in person for dinner. That the relationships we establish by meeting face to face may be more significant than the relationships that are primarily if not exclusively mediated by other communicative technologies. This generation may be able to "get more done in their human relationship," but they may be less committed and more superficial in their human relationships.?

Finally, I position myself in the relationship-first camp. My primary relationships are with people and not with technology. Technology is no more than a means to establishing and deepening human relationships in my life. I do not use technology for technology's sake; nor do I establish relationships and communicate for the sake of technological practice. My primary communicative technology is the face to face encounter.

Source: http://misterwoo.blogspot.com/2012/02/technology-communication-convenience.html

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