As I drove home from the dentist today, I listened to Spark on CBC. Today Nora was interviewing Sandy Pentland about his idea of “honest signals,” those things that we do/perceive in converstation that help us understand beyond what the language says. It’s the sort of thing I’ve heard a lot of people discuss over the years, especially in the context of telecommuting, collabortaion on the web, etc.
One of the things that is missing for me from a discussion like this is that if you are someone who is hyper-aware of these ques, as I am and many introverts are, you tend to find such face-to-face encounters incredibly draining. I can’t engage in a face-to-face (f2f) discussion without explicitly encountering the other’s “honest signals,” and the emotions they evoke. I don’t argue that there is value in getting all these non-verbal cues; however, I don’t agree that communication that takes place without those cues–email, irc, wikis, twitter, forums, etc.–is necessarily lacking in the ways presented.
I myself spend most days working with colleagues around the world on open source projects. Almost none of us are in the same office–I am currently working from home, which I do 3 days a week. I find that by removing the constant “din” of so called “honest signals,” I am sometimes better able to cope with the level of interaction necessary to do the work I do. When I do go into the office, I’m in meetings all day long (f2f) or giving lectures in class (f2manyf). I have learned to cope in such settings, as all introverts do, but I certainly don’t prefer it. Nor do I believe that the sorts of communication that take place in the work place, professional communication, are necessarily better suited to this mode.
Written communication provides me space to breath, think, and ponder. I much prefer to interact with my wife and children in person. However, when I work, I would rather that communication remained mediated behind the written word and the computer screen.
3 Comments
Your lectures don’t leave anyone with the impression you are introverted. Unless it’s a convincing act and you begin weep as soon as you get back to your office.
I agree with what you’ve written. I’ve heard it referred to as high/low bandwidth communication. I used to think I preferred irc to f2f because it is low bandwidth, but I think there’s more to it.
I think what is important to me is the asynchronous nature of online communication. Real world conversation is synchronous. A funny anecdote or raised eyebrow requires an immediate response or else packets begin to drop. I find the combination of real-time processing and high bandwidth is very taxing. (I have very poor/lossy compression algorithms.)
Online I can queue up incoming packets. Because fewer packets are lost, what should be a low bandwidth signal can actually end up carrying significantly more useful information. For instance, fewer requests to repeat signals, fewer corrupted packets.
No, no one ever believes me, in part because people don’t understand what introversion is. I’m not shy. I’m not afraid of people; rather, I spend my energy in groups instead of getting it back. It costs me a tremendous amount to lecture…I leave a great deal of myself in the room when I exit. I love to do it. But it costs me a great deal.
I think your point about synchronous communication is also very important. I must respond to the raised eyebrow, whether it’s significant or not. I think we make the is/ought mistake when we judge all non-verbal communication to be important: the fact that you “tell” me something doesn’t mean I need to hear it, that I want to hear it. The imposition of the present other is not universally good, is not essentially meant for me.
And yet, when it is done in love, when my gaze crosses that of the other in recognition, it is very important. It doesn’t happen often enough to cause me to necessarily privilege this mode of being in the general case. But I am open to it, and long for it.
There is an important time/place for f2f communication. For example doing a code walkthroughs are best done like this
1) send a “written” walkthrough (via email)
2) let the receiver digest what was sent in 1
3) go to the receivers desk and actually do the walkthrough via pointing at the monitor and saying things like “right here is where we ….”
doing it this way allows your receiver to understand what is going on before the f2f, and allows the sender to receive “high-bandwidth” signals when the receiver isn’t understanding and better explain tuff parts.
Often the sender needs to adjust their signals; the “high-bandwidth” f2f method allows the sender to receive feedback and adjust accordingly.
Like I said, there needs to be a mix. Sole f2f allows mind-wandering and forgetfulness. The correct amount of written+f2f allows for the highest tx/rx of data along with the best storage capacity.
all IMHO