It’s 2005. We’re living in the ‘information age’. We have all these technological communication solutions (email, instant messaging, telephone, and video conferencing to name a few) but it’s still outrageously hard to communicate. Especially through email.
What I’m trying to say is this: it’s hard to explain stuff. Actually, scratch that. It’s hard to explain stuff to clients, especially when you’re doing it through email. It’s really difficult, because you can’t point at things on the screen, or wave your hands around in the air in elite gesticulation. You can’t modulate your tone of voice, or enunciate things just the way you want to.
Nope. You can’t. Instead, you have to type. And through typing, a lot is lost. Instead of pointing, you have to make up your own nouns for things. Overcomplicated nouns, adjectives, and cluttered sentence structures will then take over. They storm the gate, bringing the battering ram with them. They burn, pillage, and enslave your email, and you realize that no one, not even yourself, will understand what you’re writing. You find yourself saying things like:
“I can’t do the navigation the way you’re suggesting, because of the thing in the middle (the red band) interrupts the header division, and the navigation block button band thing will overlap the main body text, which in turn will cause people running Internet Explorer to spontaneously combust. Unfortunately, the usual work-around isn’t going to be effective, because of conflicting javascript and css syntax. That’s what causes the footer and footercontent margin classes to appear bloated and disjointed, which in turn makes the css
:hoverpsuedo class code that controls the pull-down unordered list of none effect.”
And your clients won’t understand this. No one will understand it—unless they’ve got a Bachelor’s degree in telepathy. To effectively communicate with clients, you almost have to put them through a crash course in web design. You need to explain all the intricacies of all these different aspects of html and css.
So this is why I’m asking you, the reader, to search the web for a college where I (or any client I might acquire) can get a Bachelor’s in telepathy.
Start googling, everyone!
9 responses to “The Downside of the Information Age”
So true what you said. I have the same issue when emailing clients. Not even just clients, emailing my girlfriend can be a ticking time bomb cause the way I think it sounds comes off VERY different when the voice in her head reads it.. but that is for another topic.
As much as I try to communicate with clients using modern technology, I have come to realize that nothing takes the place of a face to face, nothing.
Me
unless you are an amazing email articulating wizard like Chris.
LOL
Back when I first started writing a lot of emails, I thought that my main money making scheme would be to design a program that types in sarcasm. Mostly because I am a 90/10 sarcastic/non-sarcastic person, and this comes across in my typing.
Actually, it doesn’t come across in my typing, which is a problem. If I tell someone that it is a good idea to rush up to the President of the United States reaching into their pocket for a pen to get his signature, and they don’t realize that is sarcasm, is it my fault that they end up in the hospital/jail?
Not quite the same as telepathy, but if you could type with emotions that may help too. Just a thought.
…how about somehting like
…yeah, that’s a great idea!
That must have hurt!
I love you.
…LOL..wow, WordPress strips my tags so, my initial post makes absolutley no sense to anyone.
oh well…proves the point ;-P
Yeh Chris, it’s along the same lines of what you posted earlier on 37svn today regarding the geominder.
It seems as the more we develop technology to make our lives simpler, the more we complicate things.
Here’s a link you might wanna check out:
http://home.xtra.co.nz/hosts/Wingmakers/Telepathy.html
🙂
Sarcasm isn’t hard to make understandably in typing. The only thing you should do is indirectly hint at it. e.g.
“It is a good idea to rush up to the President of the United States reaching into their pocket for a pen to get his signature.” (the sentence you just read was sarcasm)