Disconnected: Modern-Day Communication

Disconnected: Modern-Day Communication

Brien Redmon

COM480: Communication Studies Capstone

Instructor Kathleen Serra

Monday, August 20^th, 2012

Within the first moments of drawing breath into this world, we are actively communicating with other people. The wailing cries of a newborn child echo throughout delivery room hallways as an infantile cry for social interaction. Human’s first step towards understanding their fellow man begins with a banshee shrieks and grunts. Progressing slowly with little steps, we quickly progress from basic jogging into a full-speed run. Our communication levels stand at the precipice of lightning fast; the progression of crawling for centuries on our knees and elbows. We can communicate faster in the modern age but the quality of our communication has lessened with technology, and our interpersonal relationships have suffered because of it. As the iterations of communication progress, we can see the distance we put between the person we’re communicating with and communication we have chosen.

Communicating vocally is popularized as caveman grunts and growls, a more guttural and primal form of contacting one another. As speech evolved, cave paintings became symbols and shape to represent the noises humans created. The cave artwork on the Chauvet Pont-d'Arc Cave in France evokes man’s observation of various animals ("Origins of language," 2007). The message has been lost in translation, but the method was eventually refined by Sumerians later, developing Cuneiform as a form of written language ("Origins of language," 2007).  With that, written language spread by parchment, letters, and books.

Even today we still use books to communicate and evoke emotion within others, isolating ourselves and losing our imagination into the literature. The relationship that people build with fictional characters in a book is a special connection to the author themselves. Curling up with a book on a rainy day continues to be a favored pastime for reading enthusiasts. They then share memorable stories and novels with friends or members of a book club. The circle of people reading is constantly shrinking, and the debate is on as to whether reading for entertainment has been eclipsed by the digitalization of the modern era. With certainty, reading is undergoing a decline, as se percentage of 18- to 44-year-olds who read a book fell 7 points from 1992 to 2002 (Bradshaw, Nichols, Rogowski & Sullivan, 2007). With the advent of reading digital reading devices that can store digital books, the resurgence of books as a major media tool is unlikely.

Radio is an innovation that has been eclipsed in popularity to audio visual media, but still remains widely used. Radios were once used as large boxes that received transmissions that reached the receiver end as sound, but are now compact and portable. Radios are still standard items in cars and trucks for virtually every major car manufacturer. Younger generations of people still listen to music according to recent studies that have been released (Nielsen, 2009). According to Nielsen, the report found out that “18-34 year olds in these markets listen to the radio 21.5 hours each week, which is on par with listening by all people 12 and older in those 51 markets (Nielsen, 2009).” That is a good demographic to build a listener base, since it is a demographic for advertisers and companies. The technology has not changed very much, but the content of the music has shifted considerably. Gone are the days of families circling around the radio and being entertained until bedtime. No more listening to the radio and making mix tapes from the broadcasts. The digital phase has overtaken the analog era, and radio stations are beamed into cars by way of satellite. The internet has helped breathe new life into the dying radio genre, and been reborn as streaming audio.

The internet, potentially mankind’s greatest tool ever created, is also where the disconnection between man and communication began. The internet originally began in the 1960’s by an MIT student and DARPA took interest in the discovery (Cerf, Clark, Kahn, Kleinrock, Leiner, Lynch, Postel, Roberts & Wolff, 2012). Through various tweaking, adjusting, adding features into the plans, it was finally finished in the early 1980’s and eventually become free to the public.

The internet can connect people that are feet away or hundreds of miles between them. It is a media format that is comparable to television with more control and interaction. Society soon started to build around the idea of the internet becoming more commonplace. The issue generally comes up with people lacking compassion or empathy for one another. There are people who use the anonymity of the internet to tear others down or bully others. The internet is a double-edged sword that is showing of the state of our society, because it can be used for both really great and really terrible things.
          Perhaps the fastest growing medium should go to text messaging, exploding into popularity in a matter of a couple of years. “As of June 2008, over 75 Billion text messages are sent every month compared to just 18 Billion in December 2006. That number has grown by 250% each year for the last two years” ("Text message statistics," 2008). Text messages are popular in society, the ease of typing into a portable device such as a phone allows for an instantaneous transmission of words, pictures, and video to a friend or loved one.
            It is so convenient that we no longer even talk on the phone anymore and rely on text messages for major components of conversation with even loved ones. 

“Americans ages 18-29 send and receive an average of nearly 88 text messages per day, compared to 17 phone calls. The numbers change as we get older, with the overall frequency of all communication declining, but even in the 65 and over group, daily texting still edges calling 4.7 to 3.8. In the TIME mobility poll, 32% of all respondents said they’d rather communicate by text than phone, even with people they know very well” (Kluger, 2012).

Overall, words in a text message cannot convey the same level of vocal tones, verbal cues, or intimate interactions as talking to someone on the phone or in person.

The way we communicate has been irreversibly and eternally altered by technology. While it seems to be for the worst, it may just be in need of adjustment so the levels of communications can get closer to the original connections. Perhaps we should stop liking Facebook posts so much and talk to old friends over the phone. Cancel that e-mail and send a loved one a hand-written letter instead. We can communicate faster in the modern age but the quality of our communication has lessened with technology, and our interpersonal relationships have suffered because of it. This means we have to find ways to repair these lines of communication in a way to benefit us all both emotionally and mentally.