Tom Morris

I’m getting absolutely bored of this tired and clichéd canard:

Don’t debate complex or sensitive matters by e-mail. The lack of visual cues…

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With the lack of visual cues, it may be difficult to gauge audience interest and participation.

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Even though Walther (2002) proposes that users of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have the same interpersonal needs as those communicating face-to-face, he proposes that the lack of visual cues inherent in CMC are disadvantages to be overcome over time.

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Even Alvin Goldman used this trope in Knowledge in a Social World (1999, p. 165 fn 2):

It is widely noted, however, that e-mail lacks nonverbal cues present in face-to-face conversation. Ironical twists can be more ambiguous in e-mail, clouding the intent and interpretation of a message. E-mail has evovled “emoticons” partly to deal with this problem.

I see this kind of maxim offered with worrying regularity. Someone goes on about how e-mail, blogging, Twitter, Facebook or – to use the academic term, computer-mediated communication¹ – is such a new thing, and people are totally unaccustomed to communicating with others without visual cues.

Yes, whatever would we do without having the visual cues. It’s like we are blind! No, I mean that literally! Literally literal, not just literally metaphorical! We are stuck in the same position as people writing letters to one another! We’ve never had to communicate with one another before without being able to see one another!

Do the people who propose these theories not get letters in the post? Do they not send each other Christmas cards? Or use the telephone? If you believe the theorists, interpersonal and business communication at a distance never happened before we all got on the ‘net in the mid-90s.

Implicit in these kinds of suggestions is the idea that written communication is some kind of fallen medium, a second-best to actually being there face-to-face. That ideally we should be meeting in person, but we have to put up with sending one another e-mails, and written communication is a second best. It is less expressive or something.

To proponents of this theory I want to say: has someone put some LSD in your coffee or have you always been such an imbecile?

Written communication is often far, far superior to ‘real life’ communication. I’ve sat through lectures that have gone in one ear and come out the other. I’ve then gone home, actually read the book and understood it. If I fall asleep while you are talking (which I have been known to do) I can’t rewind you and get you to say it all again. If I fall asleep while reading your e-mail, I can scroll back up and read it again.

And as for the idea that written communication is uncommunicative: did you manage to skip all the literature classes in school? Are you really so dense as to think that because you suck at e-mail, this wipes away all the literary achievements of the centuries from the Epic of Gilgamesh on down?

You really think this?

Here’s the famous line from the Psalms (23:4):

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me

And here is Orwell at the end of 1984:

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

And, of course, Nietzsche:

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.

You will find no long words here. No complex grammar. Just simple words put together well.²

Do you honestly think that the lack of visual cues makes Psalm 23 less of a superb literary construction? Do you need a Skype call to King David (or whoever modern scholarship reckons the author is) or the King James translator or whatnot in order to get the appropriate visual cues? Is The Anti-Christ somehow less effective because you can’t meet up with Nietzsche on Second Life? If you really think that, you should probably get your head examined. Should I have just put this up as a damn YouTube clip instead?

If you are finding it difficult to communicate, stop blaming lack of face-to-face visual contact. If you can’t communicate in writing, it may be because you can’t write properly. There is a cure for that: education and practice.