In case you suffer from a brain disorder that
makes it impossible for you to the movement of time, let me first mention
that it's been a while since my last update. The original reason for the
delay was intense waiting; specifically, waiting for Gene
to get us Cement Horizon peons set up with Movable
Type so that blogging wasn't such an exercise in manual labor. But
lately it's just become a habit not to update. However, Kris
made threatening motions regarding my lack of updates, so here's the
goodies.
(P.S. Kris - that picture on the bottom is 'specially for you)
Today someone asked me why my relationship with M_______ failed over long distances, and they were surprised by my dislike of phones. Upon prodding, the managed to tease out the reason behind my dislike, and I thought I'd share it, because there's really nothing else I'd care to write about.
When I interact with people, I tend to do so by paying just as much attention to facial expressions and gestures as I do to words and tone. When I'm talking to someone in person things play out swimmingly, since I get the whole picture. When talking to someone online things are also fine, because people tend to compensate for the lack of gesture in text communication by overstressing tone and verbage. However, how many times have you caught yourself gesturing while talking on the phone? Since talking is involved, just like in face-to-face communication, we tend to slip into a comfortable mode and act like the other person can see what we're doing. That's incredibly frustrating for me, since I end up feeling detached from the person on the other end, both intellectually and emotionally. I look for the cues, but of course they're not there because the other person is miles away, so I can't really get any feeling from the party in question. As a result, I avoid the phone like it was a sentient flame whose mother I had inadvertently spilled punch on at last week's holiday party.
I remember hearing rumors of video phones back in the early 90s. Where did that technology go? If I could see who was talking, then I'd be perfectly fine with a phone. But until then, I'll be doing most of my business in person and over email / instant messaging, thank you very much.
Posted on July 05, 2002 11:51 PM