This Message Is Very Plain: I h8 ur txt msg
Writing in the Sunday Times, Megan Hustad laments the cultural decline of “the office phone call.” People prefer to use e-mail for petty confrontations and negotiations, and valuable diplomatic skills are lost and new employees lose the informal training that comes with eavesdropping on the boss. In my new fancy-pants position with my union, I’ve noticed that my phone calls to people at headquarters frequently go to voicemail, and that the responses come back via Blackberry. This seems to be a weekend for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over the technological devolution of our social interactions. Elsewhere in the Times, Laura Holson notices that these kids today sure do like to send text messages, creating some kind of generation gap. Apparently. Meanwhile on livejournal (itself, a weird barrier to normal social interaction) a friend of mine protests the suddenly rigid tradition of getting into and out of relationships on Myspace, complete with […]