Talking change
Is dialogue dying in a digital world? That was the question posed in a segment on magazine programme Carte Blanche at the weekend. The answer to the question is a resounding “no”. In fact, the opposite may be true.
Human communication is far from dead. It’s just changing. Fundamentally. Millions of SA school children communicate daily on cellphone instant messaging (IM) tool MXit. Millions more South Africans use IM tools to chat in text windows on their PCs. Twitter — a way of quickly telling your friends (”followers”) what you are up to or what you are thinking — has become a cultural phenomenon. Thousands more post to personal blogs each day, sharing their thoughts and ideas with the world.
Dialogue is far from dying. What’s happening is that human communication is changing in fundamental ways, thanks to technology. People are using the Internet to break down barriers to communication. They are using online tools so that they are always in contact, sharing information, communicating ideas and building relationships.
As usual, it’s youngsters, unafraid to use new technology, who are leading the changes.
If you have children, I’ll bet they spend half their lives staring into their cellphone screens, pumping out text messages or chatting in MXit or some other IM program. A good part of their social lives happens through the network. There is a constant dialogue, millions of children talking to each other in a giant virtual playground. To them, the telephone is not a device for making calls. It’s a machine that connects them to their social networks.
Those same children, when they grow up, will think nothing of using technology to communicate and do business. They will place less emphasis than their parents on face-to-face communication. They will live in a world in which almost everyone is connected. They’ll use technology as a conduit to the world around them.
Twitter is one application that provides clues about how technology is changing the way we communicate. In a short time, Twitter has signed up about 1m users around the world who send regular “tweets” from the Twitter website or from their IM apps or even via SMSes sent to a central number. If you’re a Twitter user, the moment you send a message, your “followers” will receive it, via the Web, Web feeds, IM, SMS or social networking website Facebook. Groups of friends use it to keep instantly up to date with what is happening in each other’s lives.
Some “twitterers” have even emerged as minor celebrities. And politicians have also latched onto the phenomenon. The Barack Obama campaign, in particular, has used Twitter to good effect to draw in younger voters in the US Democratic primaries. And some news organisations, such as CNN (Twitter username: “cnnbrk”), use it to provide breaking news updates. At the FM, I’m providing a breaking news service linked to FM Tech, a technology news website I edit. If you’re a Twitter user and want alerts about breaking stories in the local tech industry, feel free to follow me at “mcleodd”.
Once services such as Twitter and IM tools start to be integrated with location-based services, things will really begin to get interesting. Location-based services — using either trilateration with cellphone towers or GPS signals — will allow people to communicate in the context of their location to others. Meetro provides a location-aware IM client and real-time social network. It helps people make connections with others in their neighbourhoods. Vodacom has developed something similar called The Grid, though it is still rather rudimentary.
So, Carte Blanche, to answer the question: human dialogue is alive and well. It’s just being done in a whole new way.
First published as the column Technology & You in the Financial Mail of March 7 2008
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