communication rant

[Chadtuba]

Please forgive me, but I need to vent for a moment and this seems the best place to do it that won't actually cause me any real problems.

Do we in the 21st century not know how to communicate with each other any longer? Has face to face, or at least voice communication such as a phone call, gone by the way side in light of the internet and texting? It is my birthday today. I received about a dozen texts and 30 or so Facebook messages wishing me a happy birthday and all the best. Now from random friends and such I have no problem here as these are folks I don't normally talk to anyway. However, a large part of these messages came from my family and friends who are probably closer than a lot of my family. I received one phone call to wish me a happy birthday. Surprisingly it is from one of the people I would not have expected a call from, my ex wife. We had an amicable break up so it is not that we don't communicate once in a while it is just that she is the ONLY one who bothered to try and have a real conversation with me. Nothing from either sister, mom, step-mom, grandmother, mother-in-law or anybody else.

I'm sure that I have missed somebody over the years, but I try real hard to call those that are important to me on special days, and sometimes just randomly to see how they are doing. I have been dealing with this for years and have watched the decline of reciprocating phone calls to me fall by the wayside. I know that this is the wrong approach, but I would really like to not call any of them any longer and see how they might feel about it. Sadly, they probably would not even notice or miss my calls.

I am more than a little hurt and angered by this. And yes, I do realize the irony of doing my rant here on an internet forum.

I'll stop now and go begin my night routine to get ready for work in the morning. Thank you for indulging me for a brief moment.

[Donn]

I sure am a quirky old fart myself, but I have never liked the telephone much. The advent of email and such has absolutely given me a way to avoid the few telephone calls I might have been obliged to make in the past. Text communication has its disadvantages, but it allows me to compose my message at my leisure, and it allows you to read it at your convenience, both big wins.

Whether it's appropriate for birthday greetings, I make no judgement, that would depend on cultural expectations and, as a quirky old fart, I'm somewhat weak on the details there. From a non-culturally-relative perspective, birthday is just a day, the important thing is to have lots of them. One thing about human society that tends to inspire the quirky old fart tendency in persons like myself, is the tendency for ostensibly cheerful occasions like birthdays to become a source of anxiety, tension, drama and disappointment.

[Chadtuba]

Please don't mis-interpret me, it is not about today being my birthday as much as it is about the loss of real communication with people. It just happens that today is my birthday and I have had lots of "modern day" communication and minimal real communication so it has gotten my dander raised a bit. I miss my family and friends, especially since the move to North Dakota a few years ago. I guess one of the real problems that I have is I call, I drive/fly the 1100 miles to visit but that's usually where it ends. They usually don't call me and they sure as heck aren't going to come visit me. I'm tired of a one way street and today just finally pushed me over the edge.

Again, I appreciate that I have this outlet to vent and rant.

[bort]

That blows... I've resisted the whole Facebook craze for a few reasons. One of which is that I feel like if I keep up with my friends that way, that's "good enough" and I won't hear much from them otherwise. Honestly, I'd rather have even just 1 or 2 good talk/hangouts a year than to have constant updates about all sorts of things I probably don't care about.

I get some birthday texts and stuff every year, but one I always remember is that every year is an email from a former colleague/client that shares the same birthday with me. Not that she and I are particularly close, I haven't worked/talked/met with her in over 6 years...but sure enough, I get a quick "happy birthday" note ever year, and it makes me smile. These kinds of birthday emails are a good thing!

[tclements]

I am SO with you there. Really now, is it SO freakin' hard to pick up the phone and dial 11 numbers (don't forget the 1)? How long does it take to say, "I just wanted to call you to wish you a happy birthday, to let you know that I am thinking about you, and that I am glad that you are in my life." ?

[iiipopes]

True story: a few years ago, when my son was still a Cub Scout (he's now a Star Scout working on Life, with Eagle in his sights) he had a friend over. An attorney at the firm who did estate work died, and as his personal assistant was clearing archives we ran across a Bell 500 rotary desk telephone. The classic. It had been retrofitted with a modular plug. So I brought it home, quietly plugged it in while my son and his friend were engrossed in a video game, and used my cell phone to dial my land line. "Brrr-rring! Brrr-rring!" Simultaneously, the boys shouted, "What is that!" Yes, they had never heard an actual traditional telephone bell ringing.

I took the opportunity to teach them about the history of telephone technology, showed them how to dial a rotary telephone, and how to signal 9-1-1 in case of emergency on a land line by clicking the handset cradle if a telephone, rotary or touch-tone, is damaged, but still has a working receiver.

Yes, and now I'm on a forum posting. As technology changes, foundational elements of society are more important than ever: parents teaching children appropriate social behavior; developed and refined writing skills; and openness to diversity of culture (since we now communicate literally worldwide), among others.

[Tom]

Your post has caused me to think about my own situation.

-I am in my late 20s, thus having grown up alongside all of the technology out there today.
-I do not have a land-line phone system in my house.
-I make and receive all personal calls via a cell phone that I carry nearly 24/7 (sigh...)
-My phone number is not in the local phone book.
-I receive PERSONAL email only on my cell phone. Absolutely no work email on personal device. I don't want to be that connected. So, if it's work related, the person on the other end will be forced to call me on my cell and talk about it if it's after hours. It had better be important.
-I do not text. My phone is absoultely capable of doing so, but I just don't unless I absoultely have no alternative (no cell phone number, email, address, etc.) and it's work related. I can count the number of times I've "texted" on one hand. Seriously.
-I do not have a facebook/myspace/twitter account and do not ever plan on having one.
-I shop online quite a bit for all sorts of things. It's usually easier and cheaper.

My no facebook / no texting policy cuts down on the BS I get so that when I do get emails and calls they are 99% legit calls or emails that are relevant. As such, it's trained the folks that I deal with that if they want me to know about it, they should call me and that they shouldn't call me unless it's important.

All of that said, I feel that I'm pretty available to anyone that is trying to reach me for either personal or work-related business without having to text, resort to facebook, or post my contact information all over the internet.

I do consider myself fortunate that my very closest friends and family will call me if they are interested in reaching me for whatever reason. Out of my immediate family, my mom is the most likely to send me an email, but I can't recall that she ever sent me an email before or without calling to talk. Calling is an important way to let people know you care about them enough to actually have a real conversation with them that might go beyond a few words or a short paragraph on facebook. I will call people on important occasions, not take the easy way out and send an email.

I actually think the art of written communication has been lost. People rarely write letters "just because" any longer, and even business letters are (in my view) beginning to fade. Spelling and punctuation are generally awful and quick emails and pdf files seem to rule the day. Handwritting and business communication isn't taught in school anymore (even though I don't think I'm "old," I had those courses in school growing up). I work with people that have no clue how to format a business letter.

I'm guilty here too...I can't remember the last time I sent a letter that wasn't a payment for something or wasn't a package with some sort of "thing" in it. Really, I suppose that my grandma is the other person that actually sends me real honest-to-goodness letters. She does not have a computer or a cell phone.

It is important to have a balance of both types of communication, I think, but for my business purposes, I live and die by having things in writing. The first thing I will do when you call me on business is to get your email address and tell you to write down what it is that you want or plan on doing. I need them both for my own reference and for "CYA" purposes. It does mean that I really have to keep after my work email, but I'd rather have to dig through my email box to find something written down than to have to try to remember a conversation I had with somebody weeks or even months ago.

At the end of the day I don't think there is much you can really do to keep people from always taking the easy way out and texting or sending a facebook message on occasions where a phone call would really be nice.

No point to all of this, really. I just started thinking about all of this when I read your post.

I guess I'm young and grumpy. Oh well.

Happy Birthday, by the way.

[Dan Schultz]

I'm almost 65 and take pride in the fact that I had the first personal web page in this area when The Internet was introduced. My first computer was a Commodore 64... then a Commodore Plus 4 with four pieces of built-in software. It was still DOS and I remember it taking hours just to build a program to print mailing labels.

Technology is nice but face-to-face is always best... in second place is a phone call. I only answer texts that can be answered by 'yes' or 'no'. I had enough trouble developing an email style that conveys information in objective terms without being misunderstood.