Like every hardcore lawyer dedicated to the service of his clients, I pay careful attention to anything Dan Hull has to say over at What About Clients?  Dan’s not just the brawn behind such late-1970s underground hits as Doing Miss Daisy and Dan Does Dallas (Yellow), but put the “hole” in holistic long before the word “clientcentric” was born.  When it comes to a human connection, no one knows better than Dan Hull.

Dan’s visit to his inbox struck home, as a lesson not only in the affirmative use of communication tools, but a tale of caution of how technology has given us so many new ways to screw up communication. 

I remember when I first got e-mail, back in the mid-1990s. I would rush home with great anticipation and dial in my 4800-baud modem and I would have…four messages from four very good friends….Now, of course, I get up in the morning and go to my computer and have sixty-four messages, and the anticipation I once felt has been replaced by dread.

–Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, in Afterword to 2002 edition, 274 (Little, Brown and Co.)

I receive between 70 and 90 non-spam e-mails a day. I write about one-third that many, most as replies. Usually short ones. They are often soulless, and easy to misunderstand, even when I try to be precise. As it’s been seven years since he wrote the above, and he is even more famous, Gladwell surely gets more than 100 each day. It’s a mantra now that communications technologies save time and money, including bucks on brick and mortar rents for business.

See Me, Feel Me, Call Me. But some of us don’t even talk as much to people we see every day at work. We do e-mail. What happened to voices, vibes, faces, bodies, winks, hand gestures, touching another’s hand or shoulder impulsively, stares, grins, frowns, hand-written thank you notes, human electricity, NOT-typing, non-virtual joking, yelling, ragging and flirting, occasional confrontation, intimacy and the “god-in-the-room” magic that starts with two breathing humans in one 3-D place? Or at least on the phone?

Let us count the ways we can personally communicate, and avoid personally communicating.  In person, by letter (overnight and snail), by fax, by email, by text message, by mass email,bulletin board/listserv, by instant message, by videoconference, by twitter, by telephone, telepathically.  If you doubt the last means, you are obviously not married.

Each of these has its own peculiar nature, with pluses and minuses.  Most of us have a favored method, subject to certain circumstances and change as the newer technologies become available and enjoy prominence.  We tend to grab hold of those that serve our personal needs best.

What we do not do is use the method that is most appropriate to our communication needs, which includes consideration of the communication needs of those with whom we are trying to communicate.  Remember, communication has two parts, the dissemination of a communication and the receipt of it.  If either one fails, there is no effective communication.

Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean it fulfills its purpose or is effective to suit every purpose.  Email is great.  For some things.  I’ve yet to truly understand that benefits of text messaging, except that high school teachers can’t hear you do it.  Twitter is cute, and has some very limited actual purposes.  But if you want to have a real, two-way communication that conveys both substantive message, tones, attitudes, subtlety, no technology has yet to replace talking to someone directly.

Telephones have become an annoyance.  They interrupt us when we’re doing something else.  They are intrusive.  They allow people to insert themselves in our day, our time, when we don’t want to talk to them or don’t really have anything to say to them.  No one can have a 30 second telephone call.  Propriety doesn’t allow it, and no one has ever been comfortable with a call limited to “What’s new?”  “Nothing.”  “Okay, bye.” “Bye.”  It feels so wrong.

Yet we frequently need the give and take of communications.  When you need to discuss, there options for immediate clear feedback preclude most technologies.  If you can’t look into the next office and ask, “so what do you think?” the telephone is your best bet. 

Most of us are awfully tricking when selecting a method of communication.  When we know that someone needs to speak with us, but it’s not in our interest to make it easy, we can select a method that makes communication as difficult as possible.  Emails are easy to ignore until your damn good and ready.  Twits can be ignored forever with impunity, there being no etiquette demanding a response.  We are so smart that we can play games to make us appear to communicate when we are cunningly avoiding it. 

But we’ve become so inured to the ease of our technological wonders that we often forget how to achieve communication when we want it and need it.  Do you really want to include that emoticon to let your email recipient know that you were being “tongue in cheek?” 

One day, some technogeek will discover the coolest, newest most innovative way to communicate.  F2F.  It will change everything.