Textual Relationships

Most days I consider myself pretty lucky to live when and where I do. I've had access to the internet since I was in high school and the electronic web has shaped much of my world view, including how I communicate. I have friends who literally live all over the world and I can talk to them almost instantly. This is a big step up from the penpal I had in second grade who lived in Czechoslovakia and took 2 months to send a letter. The Czechs had cool stamps, but bad mail service.

One of the things that fascinates me about our modern plethora of ways to communicate is how different people are when they use diverse mediums. I have a very good friend who happens to be female. When we are together in a room you won't be able to hear yourself think. We talk, laugh, and provide constant feed-back to each other verbally. We rehash old jokes and stories and tell lies about the size of our craft piles. If you saw us together, you'd know we were friends.

On-line correspondence with her is totally different for me. She moved across the country and the easiest way for us to see each other is on-line but we generally fall to the level of cliches and comments about the weather. Monosyllabic answers to terse questions eventually just fade away to silence. Although I know she's an expert communicator we just don't have much to say to each other. If you looked at just our chat logs you'd think we were estranged relatives forced to sit at the table together on Thanksgiving.

I have another good friend who happens to be male. Our communication pattern is exactly the opposite. When we're in the same room together he may go hours without saying anything. He's very quiet, unless he's drinking, but that only brings him up to the level of smiling and small amounts of chit-chat. Even I sometimes wonder if he's mad at me because he speaks so infrequently, although he's always confused as to why I ask.

On-line he is a completely different person. He interacts both through text and email, and we can spend hours telling stories and creating characters for our role-playing game. While he'll never be mistaken for verbose, it's obvious that he's much more comfortable typing then actually talking to me.

I'm curious about the reasons behind this pair of communication splits. Why is she so much easier to talk to in person? Is it body language? Years of habit because I used to hang out at her house? My own stilted texting skill? Why do I have so much trouble getting him to say three words together to me in person but sometimes have to turn my phone off to get him to stop texting me? Is this a gender-related issue, a social class issue, or just these two different humans I happen to know?

As time goes on I anticipate seeing more electronic interaction in our education and in our businesses. While I'm enjoying the speed of the contact, I do think that we're losing the depth that human contact requires. Most people have heard that " multiple studies show that as much as 50-90% of communication is nonverbal." but I'm not sure we ever bother to see how that impacts the people on the other end of our writing. Possibly video conferencing and similar services will allow clear business accounting, but personal contacts may still be limited to whatever is cheapest and fastest. It's impossible to convey Shakespeare in l33t so I worry that much of the poetry and grace of English is already considered too old fashioned for public use. Sure, you can sort of translate the words, but part of the reason to use those specific terms was the sweep and grandeur of the sound. Grandeur isn't easy to get on a cell phone.

I'm going to continue my informal survey. I'll take little notes in my head when I talk to the same people both on-line and in-person and I'll try to answer my questions for myself. If I find anything earth shattering I'll let you know, but for now I'm going to work on improving all of my textual relationships. There are real people out there on the other end of those internets after all.