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| Communication – Demise of the Spoken Word |
| Monday, November 27, 2006 |
6.00am – your bedside alarm wakes you with the sound of breakfast radio. You shower, and flick on the breakfast television news before firing up the computer to clear the five emails that arrived overnight.
On your way to work you plug into your ipod as you drive past five advertising billboards and send three text messages to friends while stuck in traffic.
Upon arrival at work you listen to three voicemail messages, respond to 10 emails, send a fax, have a brief online conversation with an overseas friend, flick through the newspaper at morning tea and open the day’s mail. Before you know it, it’s lunchtime and you’ve communicated in over 10 different ways... all without opening your mouth.
You’ve been communicating, right? Well, maybe not! An English dictionary defines communication as: ‘The imparting or exchange of information, ideas or feelings’. However, communication these days is so often conducted without a spoken word and not always a lot of thought for feelings.
Email has vastly changed the way communication is handled. Instead of simply speaking to a colleague at work place, email has become the preferred communication method. But is email really all it’s cracked up to be? Sure, it’s quick and easy – but not always ideal. In the heat of the moment it’s easy to send a cranky or poorly worded email that can’t be retracted. Face-to-face communication has the benefit of context and tone – and that can make all the difference.
Next time you have something important to say, why not take a minute and communicate the old-fashioned way – face to face. The emotion, spoken words, eye contact and touch all add up, and have a far greater impact than any single aspect of communication alone.
If you don’t have the opportunity to be in the same place, the phone can at least provide a two-way exchange – which, after all is said and done, is what we are really trying to achieve when we communicate.
Wrong Email Address-
It’s wise to remember how easily this wonderful technology can be misused, sometimes unintentionally, with serious consequences. Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her email address, he did his best to type it in from memory.
Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preachers wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
PS. Sure is hot down here.Labels: General |
posted by All Smiles!! @ 12:37 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Welcome back Rajitah and keep it up.
Remember:
Next time you have something important to say, why not take a minute and communicate the old-fashioned way – face to face. The emotion, spoken words, eye contact and touch all add up.
Feeding you from your own plate, hha hha
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Nothing beats the old fashioned way of communicating face to face. gup-shup over a cup of (Sadiya's) tea and (Rajitha's) chocolate cake/blue berry muffins !!
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Well said,in this world of techno gadgets everything seems so near yet everything is so far.
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Name: All Smiles!!
Home: Auckland, New Zealand
About Me: A typical Cancerian and a moderate friendly person with frequent mood swings (everyone close to me can vouch for that :))
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Welcome back Rajitah and keep it up.
Remember:
Next time you have something important to say, why not take a minute and communicate the old-fashioned way – face to face. The emotion, spoken words, eye contact and touch all add up.
Feeding you from your own plate, hha hha