One of my friends pointed out to me yesterday that she absolutely hates talking online. I asked why and got the response of the lack of emotion. You cannot tell the little innuendos and sarcasms in human speech. All you see is a flat response. This can lead to a lot of miscommunication. After talking to her and failing to crack some of my favorite "thats what she said" style jokes, I realized that it was indeed true. The only reason people do get some of these intricacies online is their intimate knowledge of the other converser. They know what the person means, or what the person could understand when they speak. This is a similar situation to emails, but going back and forth in real time.
What ever happened to talking on the phone? we discussed the ease that this emotionless environment provides to certain types of speech, but now that cellphones run rampant, what does AIM hold other than multitasking?
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This post really speaks to the worry of our society's increasing reliance on technology. I have similar thoughts myself and I do wonder what will become of interpersonal communication as all these new technologies are developed for communicating with people in alternate means. I've even seen people talk to each other via AIM while being in the same room.
Unless you really know the person you're talking to online or you suffix everything you type with ::this is supposed to be in a sarcastic tone:: then more likely than not someone will misinterpret what you are typing. What ever happened to the good old fashioned days when you asked a girl out in person, took her out to a real dinner, and then broke up with her in person? See that last sentence is an example of the difficulty of getting across emotion effectively online. It could seem to someone that I was dead serious in describing the chronology of events in regards to relationships, when in fact I was adding a little humor to an important issue. I hope that people don't become too reliant on things like AIM for communication and forget how to pick up the phone, or dare I say it, go outside and travel to the person for a face-to-face encounter.
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