geek2geek

With all this talk on the blog about all the issues of textual communication the answer would seem to be to avoid text all together. That it’s just doomed and try to do what you can over the phone or face-to-face. I say no, text is not doomed. Text has issues we don’t always appreciate, and that causes problems, but text itself can be used for empathic communications.

When you’re faced with a touchy situation, or one that might be ripe with potential miscommunication like a geek talking to a business guy, it’s often a good idea to boost the emotional bandwidth. Rely more on all that implicit communication we do when speaking rather than having to remember to add it back in explicitly to text.

Here’s some simple rules of thumb for how to boost your bandwidth, from the least to most effective.

1. Face-to-face is better than remote.
2. Video is better than not.
3. Audio is better than text.
4. Real-time is better than delayed communications.
5. Private is better than public.
6. Personal relationship is better than not.

They are, of course, generalizations and each has specific situations where the reverse is true, but it’s a handy set of tools. Each of these is a whole topic in and of itself and I’ll discuss each of them in detail later.

bonus multiplier!

Originally I was going to list out communication technologies ordered from least to most empathic, but then I realized it’s more interesting to examine the characteristics of each and what makes them more or less empathic. Knowing the rules of thumb allows you to combine them. For example, both IM and IRC are real-time but IM is typically private whereas IRC you’re usually talking in a public channel.

The ordering of significance gets a little fuzzy at the low end, and it’s all arguable. Details aside, it does allow one to evaluate different communications strategies. You now have a framework, which you’re free to adjust to suit. For example, I can say that it’s probably better to have a phone call with somebody you know (private, audio, personal, real-time) then to talk with a stranger in the middle of the hallway (face-to-face, video, audio, real-time).

mailing lists are the least empathic

The least empathic form of communication would be mailing lists and web comments. They have none of the above characteristics. They are remote, textual, delayed, public and impersonal (not everybody knows each other). This might explain all the flame wars.

If you’re in a touchy situation, or you find email just isn’t the job done, consider applying one of the above. For example, I will often reply with private email to someone I’m having an argument with on a mailing list if there seems to be a misunderstanding taking it from public to private. Or find them on IM or IRC taking it from delayed to real-time.

face-to-face isn’t important, but it is handy

You’re probably wondering why I put face-to-face dead last, it would seem to be the most empathic. And it would, if I hadn’t already extracted out the critical elements already: video, audio and real-time. Once those are accounted for, what’s left? Smell? Touch is powerful, but complicated and we usually don’t employ it. There are some intangibles, like “punching distance” which another post, but for the most part being face-to-face with someone isn’t all that much better than a good video chat.

I will admit, I do have a bias at work putting face-to-face so low. So far I’ve been saying mostly negative things about textual communications. The seeming conclusion that the best way to communicate is to talk face-to-face and Internet communication is just doomed. Not so, we can make Internet comms just as clear and emotional as face-to-face. I want to lay out and examine the issues of textual communication. Then they can be examined and solved. I’ve got a whole Internet full of rampant problem solvers who just need to be made aware of the problem.

This is not to say face-to-face isn’t a simple and powerful tool when available. In an office setting I found it very useful to get up off my ass and walk over to talk with somebody when confusion was evident bringing every empathic communication element to bear. What might have taken hours to resolve over email would be done in five minutes.