How technology is short-circuiting real communication.
Subtitle: Have some guts and return my call… Or else I’ll
have to call your mother!
As a Peace Corps Volunteer I lived in a town with no
telephone. Everyone else freaked
out, “What, no telephone, how can we get in touch with
you?”… I kind of liked it. If someone
wanted to reach me, the best way to do it was to send the
message with someone who
would be coming to my town. All the Volunteers around me
were in the same lack of
communication situation. Once I sent a message to the next
closest Volunteer. I gave it to
the boat driver who traveled back and forth to her town and
asked him to give it to her.
In the next several days I didn’t receive a message back
from her. I began to worry. Maybe
something was wrong with her. Or maybe she never got the
message. Maybe she wasn’t
in her town. There were so many maybes to our communication
system, that the best way
to solve it, was to send her another message…. Which I did,
and shortly after that I got a
response back. She had been out of town.
Now twelve years later I live in a life that is utterly
connected. I have a cell phone. I
Facebook, email, text. I don’t twitter or Pinterest, but I
could if I wanted. Although I have
more confidence that my messages get to the people I am
sending them, the likelihood that
I will get a response is even lower.
Consider this situation: I will be teaching in another city
this summer. I need a place to
stay, so I arranged to sublet an apartment from Ms. X, the same
college student who sublet her
apartment to us last year. She Facebook messaged me May 1st,
“The apartment is definitely
yours for the month of July (until August 3rd).” I called to
arrange the details with her. I
left messages on her voice mail. I sent her messages on
Facebook. I got no response from
her until May 23rd, when she left me a voice mail (while I
was doing yoga) to tell me that
she had rented half of the apartment to another student. She
wondered, “Was I OK with
that?” I called her back that evening; since she didn’t
answer I left her a message saying
that I would consider it. She didn’t call back. I called her
again a few days later; no answer,
so I left a message emphasizing that I was counting on
subletting her place for the summer.
Several days passed and she still didn’t call me back. I was
stressed. I couldn’t sleep. I began
to investigate other sublet options and found none.
I explained the situation to my father. He said, “You want
me to call her mother.” Heck, I
thought, that ain’t a bad idea, since clearly she is not
going to answer my calls or return any
messages. My dad called her mother. Within two hours I got a
response from her.
Now you probably don’t even have to wonder: How is it that
she answers the phone when
her mother calls but not when I call? One word and two
letters for you: Caller ID. A lovely
invention that allows us to screen our calls, to block out
people who we don’t want to talk
to. An invention that allows us to control who is in and who
is out with no override button.
What would have happened if this sublet fiasco had occurred
in the years before caller
ID (which wasn’t that long ago)? Ms. X would have had to
pick up the phone to hear
who was calling and then she might have had to have an
awkward conversation with me.
Instead, she dodged me in the hopes that I would go away.
But she didn’t realize that I would play the mother card.
That same evening Ms. X sent
me a message on Facebook. She said that since she hadn’t
heard from me and that I didn’t
answer when she called me, she assumed that I didn’t want
the apartment. I don’t believe
it. These are not the jungles of Panama; the message didn’t
fall in the water; the phone line
didn’t break under the weight of a fallen tree.
I am not trying to get all high-and-mighty here. I, too, frequently
have the urge to dodge
people I don’t want to talk to. Especially now that I am
dating. Just this last month, I went
on a date with a guy. By the end of the date he had
committed a definite dating faux pas,
and it was clear to me that we should not go on another
date. When he texted the next day
to ask how I was, I really, really felt like ignoring him
because if I communicated with him
I might actually have to explain to him what I thought about
him—not a pleasant idea. But
a guy friend of mine counseled me, “Don’t do it. At least
send him a short answer.” And he
was right. I texted the guy a few word answer, and with my
terseness he must have realized
I was no longer interested (he also had been on the same
date so he would have been a part
of the same vibes). He didn’t text again.
A part of being human is living in communication with other
humans. And a part of living
with others is having conversations that you don’t want to
have. We do not live in the
jungle where communication is handled primarily
face-to-face. Modern technology allows
us to connect to people in so many different ways. It also
allows us to disconnect with
people in so many different ways. One way we can make our
society more connected is
by actually communicating with each other. When the caller
ID turns up someone you
would rather not talk with, think again. Commit to yourself
that you will answer the call
even if it means that you have to say something that will be
awkward and make you feel
uncomfortable. And
if you are a mother or father, teach your children have those hard conversations, as well.
And if you decide to screen your calls and
ignore the messages, be careful----
be very, very careful---they might just call your mother.
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