Intercultural Communication Paper

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Juan Pablo Arcos

Modern Technology and

Communication Limitation and

Barriers in the Post Internet Era

Intercultural Communication Paper

2015 - 2016

Resumen

La comunicación mediante el uso de la tecnología hoy en día es algo muy común y muy eficiente a la hora de trasmitir palabras a otras personas en el menor tiempo posible, pero al mismo tiempo, esta rapidez y este medio de comunicación nos lleva a situarnos en una situación en que la comunicación es limitada en la parte practica y tiene efectos negativos, al igual que lo tiene la era post internet ya que sus beneficios están maquillando las barreras y desventajas que este conlleva.

Palabras claves: comunicación, tecnología, palabras, rapidez, barreras, limitación

Abstract

Communication through the use of technology today is very common and very efficient in transmitting words of other people in the shortest time possible , but at the same time, this fast and this means of communication leads us to place ourselves in a situation in which communication is limited in practice and has negative side effects , just as post internet era has its benefits are already making up the barriers and disadvantages that this entails

                Key words: communication, technology , words , speed , barriers, limitations

Modern technology is very useful and has many variations when it comes to communication. Years before, communication was a lot different than is nowadays; the communication part take long time to be effective, and different from today, we have nowadays, instant communication. Long time ago, the communication we have was more like sending a physical card by mailbox, or even before that, sending messages that birds carried and take to the destination place, but that took a lot of time to do and wasn’t effective as nowadays is. Many people will agree that effeteness equal better, but all rule have an exception, and when it comes to communication, the effectiveness in technology, wasn’t the best way to communicate because some reasons.

If you want to tell your teacher, mother, girlfriend  or boss something, you can do it in just seconds, you just have to sent a message from your phone or an email a in less than one minute, the destination will receive the message also answer to it very quickly. So why we say this effectiveness is not the best way always? Because communication is more than just words, is the felling that you want to express, is the real message you want to express to the other person or destination, so sending a virtual message, is not always the best option. The reason why a one to one conversation is better, is simply because you can face the other person, and interact each other using other things like gestures, tones, expressions, and not just words.

Imagine you are the CEO of a company and you also make the interviews for the people who aplicate to work in you company, and there is this person that is from Australia and the interview will be via Skype o Emails. You will be able to communicate each other in certain way, also interact at some point and talk the time you want in the screens, and what happened when you hire this person and come to your country and you meet him in persona and its not what you expected or it didn’t fit in the impression he gave to you in Skype? You will be disappointed for hiring someone you don’t wan because in video it seem okay, but in person he was a shy person, too nervous, so he will not be able to full the position you were offering that person. (Marcuse, 1941)

Another scenario is when you are in the middle of a debate/fighting with someone via text message. You will tell your words but the person won’t know in what you put more emphasis and you wouldn’t express all your knowledge by messages and just words. That can change the whole situation of the debate difference to if the debate was face to face with the person in which you will be able to express all your ideas with your opponent. Another thing to add is that the communication technology is making common the misspelled words in every language because people change the correct way to say some words to put the in a more text message style for some words, but if you were talking then it would be no grammar mistakes. (Hirsch, 2003)

Another thing that affects communication is when it come to a person is angry to the other person so he can text all he wants, he can say all things he want to say because he will note receive the expression of the other persona when he/she read the message so he would say more angry stuff by text, difference if they are face to face, the person wouldn’t say too much of that angry words because the other person is in front of him so he will see the reaction of the words you just said. Other way that technology is affecting is that because we are so reachable with the technology , we feel the pressure that if someone send us a message, you will know in that instant, so that make you anxious because you feel the pressure to answer him so that produce stress and can damage the mood of the person.

When we talk about communication in a company, we can see some disadvantages when employees inside the organization are communicating. I worked in a Bank and they have a internal app for instants messages between any employee of the organization. The work make me write some of them messages and had to talk a lot of thing with them through that app of instant messages, and I realize that even I talk with those people everyday, I didn’t know them in person, I didn’t know anything about them until the day I when to the principal building of the Bank and I meet some of these people, and sincerely, they were very different from what they appear in messages. Later, they install another way to communicate, more difficult, so they had to train employees and that cost money to the company, also the same fact that they bought that new way to communicate cost more money. (Fulk, 1993)

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