Comments on: Technology Age Gap

By: Dave M.

Dave M. — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:11:25 +0000

Texting & social networking is killing face-to-face or vocal communication (actually “talking” to each other). And that’s the shame of it all. We’re raising a generation who won’t be capable to talk to each other professionally or express their thoughts & feelings through speaking. Also, just like Lem said, we’ll see more awful writing in the near future. I’m already seeing that now. Lot’s of people on Facebook & email send me notes w/ incorrect spelling or grammar. Not that I’m an expert in the English language but come on!!!
New technology is not always a good thing.

By: Lem

Lem — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:09:20 +0000

Yeah, the most interesting thing in this post is your statement that e-mail will be gone in our near future. It makes sense, except that it seems to hold a higher form of professionalism that social networking sites like Facebook don’t hold. Can you imagine writing your co-workers, or even your BOSS, a business e-mail through Facebook? It’s not that it’s a ridiculous concept, it’s just a strange concept.

But yeah, it does look like e-mail is pretty obsolete. If only you could attach files to Facebook messages, I would definitely have an easier time accepting social networking sites as a main form of communication.

The biggest beef I have of today’s forms of communication is people now are grammatically inept or lack the discipline to use proper grammar. In areas like game chat, it’s okay since speed is necessary. However, in places like normal chat and even texting these days, you can use good grammar. I hate it when I’m chatting with someone and they decide that correcting a typo, using commas and periods, and using real words (or the correct word – “there” vs. “they’re”/”their”) instead of abbreviations isn’t necessary. I’m not surprised that there are people out there who are just AWFUL at writing, but I am definitely disappointed.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:13:53 +0000

I didn’t know we had internet that long ago, 1987? Yep, I definitely would say I use Facebook as my main way of communication. Although, chat would be at that bottom, I never chat. What’s even more awesome is that I don’t even have a laptop of my own (mainly just use Nem’s when I have to), so I just use my iPhone for e-mail, web-browsing, and Facebook.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:25:02 +0000

Good article. Some of this stuff is pretty obvious: text and IM and social networking is new generation stuff. But perhaps the most interesting is your condemnation of e-mail. For some reason, I have it in my mind that e-mail is a superior form of communication over using the messages on a social networking site. I resist using them, perhaps because they are closed systems. Remember when you could only e-mail people who were on your ISP? I don’t, but supposed that used to be the case. However, I don’t use e-mail to communicate with ANY of my friends. I don’t have their addresses in my address book and if I ever wanted to e-mail them, I don’t know if I could find it. Most of my communication happens over IM and friends I don’t IM with, I lose contact with.

But now that you mention that e-mail is an obsolete medium for communication I almost agree. Social networking is easier to contact friends and acquaintances because there is less overhead to managing your network and it’s stored in a central location and it stores history.

A world without email, although it sounds blasphemous, is probably where we are headed. It still has a place, as an anonymous way to contact someone. For all the reasons we hate spam, the format of e-mail has its benefits.

Last thought: do I need to put my e-mail address on my business card if I have a link to my linked-in profile?