Communicating Or Making Noise?

The internet is a wonderful communication medium but recent experience has thought me that there really is no true substitute for person to person live communication.

Chat, Twitter, Skype, Video. We have so many great tools for communicating in real or almost real time yet so much still gets lost in the process.

Even with live two way video we miss out on many of the visual clues that come with stance, posture and body language. The result of this can be confusion and in some places a complete misunderstanding which can have unfortunate consequences.

I guess that's why some of the most successful people I've message spend a lot of their time actually meeting people. There's less opportunity for an important message to get lost in the medium.

Why am I writing about this?

Well, tonight, for the second time in as many weeks, something appears to have gotten lost or mixed up in the medium while chatting with a good friend online.

This "mix-up" appears to have resulted in my friend going offline rather abruptly and apparently mad at me.

We'll sort that out tomorrow, but there is a lesson to be learned here for everyone.

If you're attempting to communicate a message that is in anyway important over any medium be sure to communicate it in a way that is clear and leaves little opportunity for ambiguity.

One example I see quite regularly where the message gets completely lost is by the tribes of idiots who use chat clients like Windows Live Messenger and have every other letter or letter combination replaced by stupid animations or graphics.

Not only is the text illegible but people using chat clients other than WLM like Pidgin or Trillian don't get to see them at all.

Not only that but half of the crowd who employ all these stupid text replacing animations also tend to type their messages in that stupid form of abbreviation which is used in text messages and should belong only there.

The message is simple. If you want people to understand you 100%, then make your message clear and present it in as clear a way as possible.

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This post originally appeared on Paul OFlahertys Technology Blog.

© 2008 Paul OFlaherty

Link to original post: Communicating or making noise? | One comment

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