[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Putting a human face on technology

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Posted by Donald:
Putting a human face on technology
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1159499273.shtml


   [1]This may seem a simply Wired News article, but it's important:

     The e-mail generated by that essay was overwhelming. It split about
     50-50 for and against, and the tone swung dramatically, too, from
     adulatory to just plain snarky. I remember one in particular: "Why
     is it," wondered the writer, "that copy editors are always the most
     long-winded sons of bitches in any organization?" My reply to him
     (and I replied to as many as I could) was direct: "Because we're
     paid to be. That's why."
     The following morning there was an apologetic response from him
     waiting in my mail queue. He was chastened, not because I wasn't a
     long-winded SOB on this occasion, but because I had answered him,
     one human being to another. He hadn't expected that. He thought he
     was writing into the ether. By answering him, I was no longer a
     faceless wall of sound. For him, at least, I now lived and
     breathed.
     We enjoyed some clever banter until each of us gradually wearied of
     it and drifted off to other things, but it hammered home a lesson
     I've never forgotten: In a world where technology theoretically
     binds us closer together, it's more important than ever to really
     talk with the other person.
     Although technically, e-mail (with or without a hyphen) and its
     even faster cousins, IM and text messaging, make communicating
     across time and distance a breeze, it's still the quality of the
     communication that counts. In the case of my irritable reader, our
     e-mail hookup worked because both of us were willing to make it
     work.

   This I agree with whole-heartedly. It's way too easy to take the
   person on the other end of an e-mail on online conversation as an
   anonymous nobody, and that's unhealthy. The author goes on from there,
   and I haven't had a chance to digest the rest and decide whether I
   agree or not, but remember in the next flamewar that the person on the
   other end is a real human person.

References

   1. http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71851-0.html