L: I suspect the ethereal level isn't new, and is often undercut by the new efficiency.
I read a piece last year that explored the miscommunicative nature of e-mail, and I've had several go-rounds myself to establish the tone of a given message.
We use : ) , >: o , etc to nuance e-mail, whereas smiley faces in written correspondence were generally only used by giggly teenagers.
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Because, I think, written correspondence, and even typed or word-processed correspondence, is more deliberate, more carefully and expressively worded, simply because it takes longer.
So people were more likely to express some part of their essence in their words, and there are on record amazing relationships between correspondents, many of whom never met in person.
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I've always been a letter-writer, and I initially assumed that e-mail would be better in almost every way--'almost' because a tactile letter that someone else has written and folded is still very special.
What I found, though, was that my annoyance at people who didn't write back grew, greatly, when all they had to do was type out a message and hit 'send,' dammit, and also that composing e-mail often felt, and still sometimes feels, like sending a box that is smaller than its contents.
Maybe that tactile letter was more special than we realized, maybe there's more significance than we knew in the act of sitting down to write or type a letter, beginning with 'Dear' and the date, and ending with finding a stamp and envelope and remembering to catch the mailman next day.
We often can't just type a message and hit 'send' because expressing ourselves isn't that simple.
Techno-mediated communication is wonderful for keeping in touch and bouncing ideas with people one already knows, but it seems very difficult to get to know someone or to extend a relationship through e-mail.
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[ 1 ] mwirth:
Yeah- I find that sarcasm or teasing, to people I don't know very well, must be followed by a smiley face to prevent misconstrual. Talking on the phone or in person, vocal tone would accomplish that (or a smirk.) |
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[ 2 ] mwirth:
Well, I dunno if the side of us that is revealed when we take our time and think about what we are writing is really more "essential" than the side of us that emerges when we type off the cuff. I think more of the "real" you comes through in spontaneous interaction- but this means face-to-face is far more revealing/"essential" than email OR paper letters. Email is spontaneous, but lacks a lot of info. E.g., over the phone you get vocal tones, which are essential. At least in a paper letter you get handwriting. |
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[ 3 ] laura:
I see your point--I just wonder why e-mail's intention seems to be missed by its recipients more than letters'. Maybe it's just that more plebes and philistines write e-mail. |
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[ 4 ] chaos:
i think e-mails' intentions are missed more often than letters' precisely because they are easier and quicker to write. i can type much faster than i can handwrite, so it's much easier to just jot things down and not think so much about how clear i am being. in most cases, the more effort/inch one puts into a piece of writing, the clearer it will be.
of course, an e-mail is also generally much easier to edit than a handwritten letter, but i think most people don't most of the time (because it's so easy to just hit send). |
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[ 5 ] sprice:
Rat-- the point about the richness of different modes of communication is excellent. My father actually turned my head inside out once by talking about human interactions in terms of 'bandwidth'. Face-to-face is much higher bandwidth than over the phone because you have visual as well as audio 'channels'. And both are higher bandwidth than written communication, which has neither. It's interesting to think that for all this revolution in communications that the web has supposedly fostered, it has still only thoroughly addressed the least communicative medium we have for immediate interaction. |
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[ 6 ] laura:
I disagree that a phone conversation has greater bandwidth than written communication, at least for me. I think it comes down to time--writing takes more time and reading allows more, which makes both richer. Talking with people face-on, you can both say things without words and take time both to put words together and between them. On the phone, conversational pauses are just dead air-time. |
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[ 7 ] samira:
I think that it really depends on the kind of communication happening. Some topics lend themselves to letters, others do not. I think that there are things that I need to discuss with people--need the more active back and forth, and other things that work just fine by letter. Then there are places where speed is not an issue and I really do best by letter. All depends on the style of communication, and, quite frankly, my mood. |
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[ 8 ] sprice:
re: Laura, I still think that inflection and tone make a phone conversation higher "bandwidth." Even if you set aside handwriting (which may be evocative for some but is merely obfuscatory in my case), and ignore the time element required to make writing richer, then we still see people struggling in text to express things which are clear and simple in a phone conversation. In email (and teenage classroom notes) people may make little doodles or "emoticons" to express sarcasm, seriousness, etc., while in a phone conversation that's almost immediately apparent. Yes, you can usually impart that through well-crafted prose. But who actually can or does on a regular basis? Those amazingly related letter-only correspondents are rare indeed. I do still agree that the point you make in the sentence, that the deliberation required for writing means that people are more expressive in letters, is true. An interesting related anecdote... Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk author extraordinaire and certifiable computer afficionado in his own right, is writing his next novel by hand. He has explained that the writing styles and products are vastly different for him and that he needs to write this new novel in the slower, more deliberate form. |
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samira:
I am in more or less complete agreement with Laura here. It is almost frightening to me to read what she wrote because it feels like I have been channeled. Which raises the question of which of us owes the other a letter at the moment. |
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cgroom:
A resounding "yes." I fear the problem with the new media of communication is that they do not enhance our humanity, but instead make it more starkly obvious. |
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cfanjul:
i find this observation intreguing - the more human we appear, perhaps the more human people will feel (rather than superhuman and invincible, as presented in movies), and we can interact in more honest ways. i struggle against writting formal emails when they are required (by business, social norms, etc) because i want to present myself as i am. of course, this ties back a bit to the quality of the written product: a formal email takes more time, is more thuroughly considered, and thus more precise and effective. but missing the fuzzy edges of humanity. |
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xanthi:
When scrolling down this collum of comments, I was suddenly struck to realize I knew exactly who has posted a particular comment even without looking at the login, based on the tone of the writing. I then tried to read the remainder of the comments while covering the name with my left thumb to see whether or not I could identify the author. The experiment failed, because I have not the skills to scroll and cover simultaneously. Thoughts on or interest in other possible experiments? |
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mwirth:
Xanthi, that is really interesting. Maybe typed words have more bandwidth than we think. Do you know what cues tipped you off, or was it just a gut feeling?
Yes, I think it would be neat for all of us to write anonymous little paragraphs and then try to guess who is who. I think we would be good at it. We do all have distinctive styles of putting words together. |
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L: I wonder if making the fantastic possible hasn't limited our imaginations; if almost anything is possible, will we even explore the minority that isn't?
Will trying to make things possible restrict our imaginings of them?
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Maybe not.
I do think that there's more imaginative excitement in suggestion than in special effects, though--I like bare-bones theater that nonetheless puts me solidly in Illyria, I like that Edward Gorey never tells us exactly what the Curious Sofa does because he knows readers' imaginations are dirtier than anything he could get printed.
Even before I begin imagining what the sofa might do, I'm titillated that a suggestion has been made.
I think sublety is ultimately more powerful than Star Wars.
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[ 9 ] cfanjul:
it's like a book becoming a movie - once the actors have been chosen and presented, whenever you go back and read the book, your own initial images have been replaced by those of the film. science even latches on to science fiction inventions and spends decades to make them real... what might come about if the science industry was left to it's own devices? that said, i agree that technology is fantastic for communicating ideas that we have, which seems to be important above much else. |
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[ 10 ] cgroom:
Them's fightin' words. |
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[ 11 ] sprice:
Do you think that the realism of a technology crowds out subtlety and innuendo, or forces it into new forms? It's an interesting thought. One of the criticisms of the newer Star Wars movies is that as simple and unsubtle as the first trilogy was, the newer movies are even less so-- they show more with special effects, have more cut scenes, show rather than tell more. And the same might be said for media in general-- that it's harder, or very different, trying to be subtle, understated, or ironic in a photograph than in a prose passage. And with the speed of the images in film, it can be as much more difficult to be realistic and impart subtlety there as compared with photography. |
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samira:
Well, in part, I wonder whether lower quality technology forces more use of imamgination--and our imagination fills in better than any sort of special effect? |
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And yet, as soon as we imagine something wonderful we want to communicate it.
Everyone on skein writes, and has written creatively in the past even if he or she doesn't now.
We also draw and photograph and perform--look what I saw, or think, or imagined.
And technology gives us the tools.
Are special effects art?
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One of Chip Kidd's characters points to photography, realistic facsimile, as the culprit for pretentious and masturbatory art, because art lost its purpose of recording when you could "take" a picture.
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(Does any other representative form "take" its subject?) Where's the line between recording and interpreting?
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[ 12 ] sprice:
I am going to stand on "yes" to this question. Well, as much as you can say that anything "is art", since that's so nebulous. But I watch the "bullet time" scenes in The Matrix, for instance, and I see Eadweard Muybridge merged with John Wu to create a technique that depicts the events in the story as they were seen or felt by the characters. To get a bit highfalutin' about it, the special effects aid in depicting the character's subjective views; at the same time, they're beautiful-- celebrating the motions, the bodies, the choreography of the film. |
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[ 13 ] sprice:
Who is Chip Kidd? |
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[ 14 ] laura:
Chip Kidd in -The Cheese Monkeys-, a very fun novel, partly about graphic design, that Alex lent me. |
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[ 15 ] cgroom:
"Effort," he replied glibly. |
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[ 16 ] cfanjul:
in defense of photography: a good picture both records and interprets. just sayin'. |
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[ 17 ] xanthi:
The Chinese expression for to "take" a "picture" is to "illuminate" a "likeness". |
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[ 18 ] laura:
Cool. Anglotongues used to talk about "making" a photographic plate, but once the technology got less work-intensive the idiom changed. I don't remember how Spanish or French expresses it. |
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L: Technology does not seem to bring us together as a society--the bigger it is the more easily we can avoid one another--but I think it does make us more aware and more tolerant.
There are obviously lots of fundamentalist websites, but there's also more evidence than there used to be of different ways of existing that just might be valid, too.
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cgroom:
True, it doesn't bring us togther, but it DOES keep us from blowing apart. Without rapid communications, a large country just isn't possible. Without television and movies and XBoxes -- or, hell, printed books and plentiful hooch -- teeming hoards of humanity living all jammed packed into cities just wouldn't be possible. |
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laura:
That is, a large country with our current population and economy. Which puts me dangerously close to nostalgia for the Pony Express. |
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sprice:
Another way that this 'keeps us from blowing apart' is what I think is a perverse side effect of freedom of speech-- I think that one of the best things that you can do to combat a stupid, racist website is to let it be seen in all its idiot glory. Let the author dig their ideology's own grave. |
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sprice:
re: cgroom --ooh, XBoxes and hooch! Where?! ;P |
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