We are still learning about e-mail

I am regularly reminded how easy technology change is when compared to people change.

This week the New York Times looked at the things that we are learning about communication in the Internet age.

This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

Most people are a long way from understanding what is being said here. Many people have little comprehension that what they think they have written isn’t what people read.

Personally, I write this blog in the knowledge that most people won’t comprehend what I want them to comprehend. I’m also quite sure that I haven’t really comprehended what the author in the New York Times thinks they wrote.

There is a trend in many businesses that limits travel in favour of teleconferences, e-mail and video conferencing. It’s driven by a focus on the cost, rather that a focus on the value. I really liked this quote from the article:

“When you communicate with a group you only know through electronic channels, it’s like having functional Asperger’s Syndrome — you are very logical and rational, but emotionally brittle,” Professor Shirky said.

As we come to comprehend how we actually communicate I expect to see the balance between electronic and face-to-face interactions change significantly. This week I spent much of one day in a room with a team working on a single deliverable. We got much further together in a few hours than we would have done in a week as a virtual team. We recognised that we needed to be together to achieve what we needed to achieve. It was a high value meeting, it was also a high cost meeting.

We are a long way from fully understanding the extent our Asperger’s, until we understand it, we will not be able to design coping mechanisms.