An interesting side comment by Fearne Cotton on her radio show led to a barrage of texts and emails agreeing with her. She revealed in conversation that she spent most of her life communicating with everybody from the outside world via text or email. Messaging was always preferable to actual talking.
In fact, she admitted, she feels a little on edge and doesn’t like it when her phone actually rings. She added that she doesn’t actually like phone conversations and somehow finds them intimidating. They make her panic.
Listeners in their hundreds then revealed a similar ‘fear’ (if it is a ‘fear’) and it does seem that generations are now growing up preferring to communicate via text rather than actually speaking.
In America, which has always been behind Europe when it comes to the texting craze, the early version was Blackberry Messenger, a sort of texting club for Blackberry users only. Even when texting was restricted to Blackberrys, the craze was the same. These days they have caught up and texting is for every phone and every network and everybody.
Pretty much the whole world is now texting and avoiding actually speaking.
Costs aside, and indeed the price of exchanging 160 character sentences to complete a conversation can far exceed that of a minute’s voice conversation during which a thousand times as many characters can be used, there is much more that can be offered during a ‘duplex’ conversation. There’s the added dimension of inflection and interruption, and a very rapid exchange of views and information. Nevertheless, people are electing to use this ‘simplex’ method of communicating.
‘Duplex’ is where both parties can ‘talk’ to each other at exactly the same time, whilst ‘simplex’ means that it’s one then the other. The earliest forms of communication over long distances were simplex, of course. The letter is a bunch of words gathered together and bundled off to a distant person who will then respond with a bunch of words in return. There is no interruption or immediacy.
Eventually this communication method speeded up with the invention of the telegraph and then radio. Even so, with amateur radio (‘hams’) for the techies and then CB (Citizen’s Band) for normal people, conversations were still taking place in a simplex manner. Anybody who has had the misfortune to tune in to a conversation between ‘hams’ will know how awful it is. Each will take it in turn to huff and bluster away about nothing for at least 2 or 3 minutes whilst the other pretends they are listening. Then the roles reverse. The dispatches are like the letters of old, requiring no interaction.
Despite the invention of the mobile phone, ‘hams’ will still prefer to use the simplex method of communication.
In other words, something definitely draws people to engage in simplex communication rather than duplex (or ‘real’) conversation. What is it?
I suspect it might be a bit about being in control. A ‘ham’ rattling on and on about the most trivial of things isn’t going to be interrupted by the snoring of the person who should be listening. There is no immediate judgement or allowing the interruption of the thoughts that are manifesting themselves in the monologue. By the time the ‘conversation’ has flipped over to the other party, he will have long forgotten to honestly comment on any of the content of the previous dispatch.
In the modern world, I guess dumping a girlfriend by text is a bit more efficient than trying to say the words directly to their face … or ear. The dumper is able to formulate exactly what needs to be said in multiples of 160 characters, and not hear the sobbing of the dumpee. So, maybe it’s about not being able to cope with direct and ‘live’ communication any more.
I was recently watching a stage production, and was taken by how ‘good’ the audience was compared to those in a cinema. Film goers regularly chatter and laugh and joke amongst themselves as if the film isn’t actually on, and they are sitting in a pub. Theatre goers have a little more respect, but they do continue to furiously text away whilst the actors are trying their best to capture their imagination and lift their eyes away from their mobiles. They text others, or write on Facebook and Twitter, “I’m in the theatre, Fred Blogs is a brilliant actor” not able to wait and enjoy the production first before telling others. And how can they ever know how brilliant Fred Blogs is when they are so busy pounding away at their phone?
They don’t send letters to each other any more, but da yoof sure do still seem to need to live a simplex life. But why?
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