The Michigan Telephone blog

Garrett Smith believes that the phone call is dead, or nearly so.  Here’s an excerpt from his blog post:

…..The phone call is dying because today’s youth no longer value the ideal that the phone call holds. That is the recipient of the call no longer thinks, “Wow, that was mighty nice of them to pick-up phone and call.”

I am fortunate in that I have friends, family members and business associates from a broad range of ages, backgrounds and who have a diverse communication preferences. Every week, I communicate with 75 year olds and 15 year olds a like. I believe there is a succinct dividing line between those who still value the phone call, those who still prefer to make a phone call and those who do not see the value in a phone call and would prefer to keep all of their communications electronic and textual. I believe that this “dividing line” is those who are currently the age of 26.

If you are 26 or older, you “missed” the MySpace, Facebook, social networking craze while you were in high school and college. You have a cellphone, of course, but unless you use it for business, you still don’t get your emails on it, send SMS messages like they are going out-of-style and only use 1/10th of the phones functionality (it is a phone you makes calls on it!). Few in these age brackets, browse the web like they once watched television. Most do not understand the idea of “dis-connecting” because, well, they were never really connected in the first place. Sure there are technophiles out there who will tell me I am wrong, but when you look at the average person, the mass market type, you will see that there communications preferences remain old school.

Read the complete post here.

I notice this even among people in my own family and circle of friends.  The older folks may have an answering machine, but if they are home they are likely to pick up the phone when it rings.  Anyone under about 40 (and older among folks who might be classified as technology “early adopters”, by which I mean the folks who had personal computers even before most folks had heard of the Internet) is more likely to let an answering machine or voicemail pick up, and return the call at their convenience, which often results in communications by voicemail tag, in short snippets.  These same folks may use instant messaging, but don’t live and breathe it – I’ll get IM’s like “Is now a convenient time to call?” from someone who wants a phone chat.

Then there is the generation behind mine.  Calling them is a real crap shoot.  Even if they are home and otherwise unoccupied, they seem to see the telephone as an intrusion into their lives.  Usually if I call one of them, I pretty much know that I’m going to have to leave a message on their machine or in their voicemail.  I think that telemarketers are the biggest reason for them holding that view – once you start to believe that most calls are from people wanting to bother you or sell you something, a telephone call no longer holds much value, but instead actually becomes an intrusion into your life.  I would bet there is a correlation between the rise in popularity of unlisted numbers (and the use of cell phones, which effectively give you an unlisted number) and the public perception of a telephone call as an annoyance.  This is one reason I believe that telemarketers are among the most contemptible scum that ever walked the face of the earth, and if I believed in the Dante’s Inferno version of Hell (which I don’t), I would believe that one of the lowest levels would be reserved for telemarketers and similar scum, that have turned the telephone away from being an instrument that brought people together to an instrument that is often seen as an intrusion into our lives.

I don’t use text messaging at all, other than computer-based instant messaging.  I prefer to talk to people directly – it’s much easier and more efficient, and also there’s less chance that my words will be misinterpreted.  For example, people can tell from your tone of voice whether you are joking or serious. When I write, I have to worry about whether my words might offend someone (unless, of course, I don’t care if I offend them, telemarketers being a prime example).  When using instant messaging, you don’t really have the time to contemplate your words, or think about what you are saying – you want to keep the conversation flowing.  Granted that if you’re about to say something really obnoxious, you have a couple of extra seconds to reflect on it before sending, but I don’t know if that cancels out the ease with which text can be misinterpreted by the receiving party, due to the lack of audible cues about the sender’s intent.

Anyway, I think Garrett Smith makes a valid point here.  Voice communications are dying out insofar as younger people are concerned.  And personally, I am willing to lay the blame for that primarily on the backs of telemarketers, “survey-takers”, and others of their ilk.  You can see the difference in people’s attitudes between those who lived most of their lives before telemarketing became such an obnoxious practice, and those who grew up watching their parents fume over (and sometimes curse at) telemarketers that interrupted the dinner hour. If you think there’s another reason for the communications “generation gap”, please feel free to leave a comment.

And by the way, when I ask people to leave comments, you really should consider that people who write blogs judge the success of those blogs partly by the number of comments they receive.  Back when this blog was on Blogger, I did not post for many months because I thought I wasn’t receiving any comments, and that no one was reading the blog.  I later found that Blogger wasn’t notifying me of new comments. Well, WordPress does notify me of new comments (at least I’m pretty certain they do), but readers of this blog – if there are any – haven’t been leaving many comments.  The other thing I notice is that the “top posts” list – a list that is automatically generated based on the number of times each post is accessed – always shows that posts that are not “on-topic” for this blog rank the highest. So perhaps this “generation gap” even reaches to this blog – not only are telephone calls falling out of favor, but perhaps so are blogs that deal primarily with telephones and other means of voice communications???

Unless something happens that makes me believe that I’m not just writing a personal diary here, I may soon be finding another outlet for my efforts.  I’ve already scaled back on everything else related to telephones and voice communications – in the last couple of years I discontinued the MI-Telecom mailing list (which had become ineffective, in part because it was being blocked as potential spam at many sites – thanks once again to the people who think that every means of communications is intended for them to use to intrude on people’s lives while trying to sell something) and I also took down much of the web site, which had become outdated (and in that case also, I had little indication that anyone was actually using it.  Since taking it down, I’ve received exactly two e-mails from people who miss it). The only reason I’m not yet persuaded to abandon this blog is because there are quite a few subscribers to the newsfeed (the thing you subscribe to by clicking on the little orange button). However, I’m aware that many people subscribe to a lot of newsfeeds, but don’t actually read all of them (I’ve personally been guilty of that at various times). So I still don’t know if anyone is actually reading this blog.

That’s why comments are like gold to a blog author – they let the author know that people are not only reading the blog, but sufficiently motivated by it to add their own thoughts.  And I’m in the somewhat ironic position of writing a blog primarily about voice communications, which perhaps holds little interest for the text-based generation, which would logically be the group most likely to actually type out a comment every now and then! So folks, if you like this blog (or any blog), you might want to consider leaving a comment now and then so the author knows that he’s not just wearing out his keyboard prematurely for no good reason.