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Health & Fitness

Communication Breakdown

Is the speed and volume of electronic communication leading to communication breakdowns? If so, how is this affecting our society as a whole and our own lives?

Several months ago I was chatting with a neighbor. He observed that in the last couple of years he's noticed that folks tend not to return emails or phone calls anymore. I realized he was right. Just now I have emails out with questions that I have not received any response. The probable reason is excessive busyness, but the thought always enters my mind that I am purposely being ignored. I never feel at ease with someone upon getting no response until I see them in person and see their smiling face. Unfortunately, many of them I never will see, so there is this icky feeling I carry about them forever. Then, of course, one never knows whether one's email was a victim of spam. So many unanswered questions leave me uneasy.

Last year I volunteered with PAPA People for the July 4th parade. Months after the parade we had a follow-up meeting to evaluate how it went. What I heard should have been no surprise. They said it was nearly impossible to get anything done with the various vendors and contacts, because emails and phone calls went unanswered. Seeing this is a general trend makes me reconsider my stance that it's personal.

In an effort to understand the email phenomenon, I picked up a book The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman. What I discovered astounded me. He said that employees of companies get an average of over 200 emails a day. It takes considerable time to go through them and answer them. The problem is answering emails only increases the volume further, because each reply gives rise to another response. People just can't keep up.

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Last year a neighbor ignored my email. I inquired about it. She says she gets nearly 50 emails a day and is overwhelmed by the volume, and she's a stay-at-home mom. I wondered how someone who doesn't have a job could be getting that kind of volume. I know she's into Facebook with several hundred friends. Having once had an active Facebook account, I understand how email could stack up. I found it totally annoying that if I make a comment on someone's wall that I received emails for every subsequent comment made. Just to let you know, you can change the setting so that doesn't happen--but who has the time to figure it out? Also, I just joined some meet-up groups and have been getting a large volume of useless emails. I since have changed the settings, but now I see how even an unemployed person might get inundated.

John Freeman suggests many different ways to reduce the volume of email--some of which I have adopted. One of the things he said made me a bit sad. He said that sending an email to thank someone is considered a nuisance as it adds more to the queue. An expression of gratitude is now considered an inconvenience? Where are we headed?

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My concern with all this is communication breakdown. What PAPA People saw is the tip of the iceberg. It is no wonder we see our businesses, organizations, government, friendships, and families falling apart from dysfunction. Communication is key to functioning, a necessity to get things done or to relate properly. It is nothing to take for granted. No one person can have all the answers even with the Internet. We must rely on each other for information. Relationships with family and friends too require responsiveness or rifts may develop.

I do not see our civilization able to keep up with this exponential growth in communication. I sense the communication breakdowns will continue to get more extreme and more dysfunctional until barely anything works. We are only human with 24 hours in a day. I don't even think robots or robotic implants can save us.

I write this to tell you (and as a reminder to me) that if you don't hear back from someone, it most likely isn't personal. Do not expect an apology, for like driving through stop signs, this has become acceptable behavior and expecting any accountability is passe. These are the times we live in. It appears from many of my blog pieces that the issue often comes back to frantic busyness. In fact, it's become so apparent this is true that a movement has been started called The Slow Movement. People are taking their time back and consciously slowing down in every area of life. In addition, an organization of a group of cities in Italy has formed called Slow Cities; and John Freeman would like to start a Slow Communication movement.

Are we ready to slow down? Will slowing down happen as a conscious movement by intelligent choice or by complete breakdown--or both. I prefer the former. What about you?

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