How Technology is Making Communication Less Friendly

The information age is officially upon us. However, science fiction did not even foresee how camel like some techology has become and another excuse to bury your head in the sand.

It was bad enough when voice mail first became available. At that point, we lost the human voice answering phones for the most part in business. At one time, the person who answered the phone created the official tone of the company. Now after a menu of about ten options, it is almost impossible to reach a human. Sometimes important issues have to be addressed like healthcare, taxes and appointments. Priorities are not important in voicemail. You could be short a million dollars at the bank or frantically calling about a prescription and the answer is the same. Your call will be answered as soon as the next agent is available. If that weren't bad enough, now almost every individual carries a cell phone. It makes it very convenient to not take calls. Just keep the phone turned off and let it go to voicemail. No one has to be responsible for returning a call anymore. There is always the standard excuse of I was in traffic, out of range, had the phone turned off, etc.

OK, we can see individuals have adopted this method and business has adapted to it as well. Today, you cannot call or ask about a job. You must e-mail your resume. There is no contact with the employer or Human Resources. The hiring manager will review your resume and call if interested. What hiring manager? In my experience so far, the resumes seem to go into the vast cyberspace wasteland. My guess is if you called about your resume, even if you received an acknowledgement, no one would know who you are.

If you are a salesman, just try to get an appointment with a decision maker. At this rate, they will have to go back to selling door to door because that is the only way to see someone. What are these managers and decision makers doing? Probably talking to their children on their cell phone about sports practice, daycare and carpools. Don't get me wrong, I think cell phones are great for kids to be in touch with their parents. After all, why should they have to talk to anyone else?

With the bad economy it is a wonder that anything gets done . Or maybe again, that's why we have a bad economy. We used to measure productivity by the time spent away from doing your work. Now there is not a lot of work going on, except selective communication to only certain individuals which certainly prevents business from moving forward. Oh, I'm sure this is justified and considered cost cutting, which is also measured by people who do not talk to anyone. So to be clear, we are now at the mercy of machines, technology and technical support who by definition do not communicate, except at a very basal level.