Communicate 1.1.1. Definitions of Communication

Written Communication and Online Courses

According to Turkle, "the devices not only change what we do, they change who we are" and I certainly have to agree with this.  Our manners have changed, our way of communication has changed and the things we find important have changed. We find that we can multitask, even being with multiple people having multiple conversations with them at the same time.  This is what she means by being alone together because we are emailing people, texting people, lurking on discussions, blogging, checking Facebook - only giving as much of ourselves as is absolutely necessary and never learning how to participate in a real relationship.  Relationships are even ended via Facebook and text message. Our communication has lost much of the empathy now that it is done digitally because we shorten everything to make it easy and leave out many emotions that are necessary in human nature.  Turkle says that communication with the technology "compromises our capacity for self reflection" and we really are putting ourselves into an isolation because we are losing the ability to care about the feeling that someone is listening due to the fact that we are being "listened" to on Facebook, Twitter, email, text....we no longer dare to enter a real conversation because of this. She says we use technology to define ourselves - that is pretty scary because it is causing us to connect digitally much of the time and we feel completely isolated when we are not connected to our device.  Face-to-face is frightening and we do not know how to approach others compassionately and show our feelings. 

I think our current use of technology is headed in the wrong direction and we need to learn to look at the way we use it and learn to build real human relationships, where we can be unplugged without losing our minds.  We need to be able to have safe places where we can unplug and get to know each other and learn to "connect" to each other by listening, making mistakes, apologizing, and getting to know the real each other.  

We have learned to get right to the point and to be careful about what we print.  Since so many of our messages are not face-to-face, conversations do not have the verbal cues so many things can be misread. Something as simple as typing in all caps can be interpreted as shouting and if you are using it for education - you have just shouted at a student. Face-to-face communication in the classroom can be long and inclusive of asides, but emails and discussions are straight to the point and short - because who is going to spend time trying to read something long and wordy. 

In regular conversations, we can jump from topic to topic, or mix the topics; however, with today's messages we have to try to stay focused on a single topic per message and once again, we have to keep it short.  

We have to remember at all times that we are now writing things down that can be forwarded or posted at anytime.  We should not use our online communications for confidential conversations - or it may become public.