Etiquette for a wired world - Robert Cribb
From cell phones to call-waiting, we're techno-boors
You're sitting in your office speaking with a colleague when the telephone rings. Your visitor stops mid-sentence and waits for a sign from you, some split-second gesture, a shift of the eye or movement of the hand that hints at the appropriate protocol.
Do you abort your conversation and pick up, or wave the call off to voice mail? Choose carefully.
The wired, always-in-touch, information overload '90s have created what some technology watchers say is an expanding social etiquette vacuum.
We are techno-boors, they say, adopting high-tech gadgetry without a corresponding code of conduct. We're always accessible but never free, dismissing each other with press of a button like switching channels on a television. And it's making us less courteous and more isolated.
"We haven't yet worked out the community practices, the acceptable behaviour, the rules of the game,'' says Liss Jeffrey, associate director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. "We've shifted without coming up with the civil rules to give us livable ways to construct our lives. It's more serious than we understand. These are the building blocks of our community.''
Never before have so many technological advancements impinged so much on our social conventions.
Remember when it was considered improper to answer the telephone during dinner? Or how about the days when you either got a human being or a busy signal when you dialed seven digits.
Reach back to the ancient days, five years ago, when thank-you notes were written on paper.
The blisteringly fast-paced development of communications technology has made such simplicity quaint.
Even teens are supplementing the family telephone with constantly ringing, beeping and vibrating cell phones and pagers. The old busy signal is all but defunct in the new world of multiple "call-management'' features.
"We haven't yet worked out the community practices, the acceptable behaviour, the rules of the game."
- Liss Jeffrey
Associate director of McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
And e-mail has now surpassed the paper and ink version by volume.
But in adopting all of that high-tech advancement, experts say we've shed our sense of decorum and propriety.
Our common techno-etiquette offences including leaving long, rambling voice mail messages, ignoring e-mails for days, leaving cell phones on to ring in public places, sending e-mails to people who sit a few feet away from us, and perhaps the most controversial electronic etiquette offence, using call waiting.
"It's like someone glancing over your shoulder at a cocktail party in case there's someone else more interesting than you to talk with,'' says Grant McCracken, a cultural anthropologist in Toronto specializing in popular culture.
Michel Blondeau, special projects director for Toronto software developer Digital Renaissance, used to have call-waiting. Not anymore.
"It's disruptive. If I'm on the telephone with someone and I'm put on call-waiting, I will hang up. I'm an important person. I'm the centre of my universe. Call me when you have the 10 minutes to talk.''
Audrey Glassman, an etiquette expert and author of Can I Fax a Thank You Note? tars call-waiting with this spirited pejorative: "It is a technology invented almost solely to be rude. It turns phone calls into a popularity contest. It's profoundly unprofessional.''
And yet, we love it.
First launched in 1991, the ubiquitous phone service is one of the most popular features in North America, says Karen Hyponen, a Bell Canada spokesperson.
But despite all the call juggling we're doing, it's nearly impossible to get through the day without being forwarded into at least one voice mail system.
And if you spend time analyzing voice mail messages, you'll understand the etiquette offences of that technology.
Here's a hint: At the tone, be brief.
"It takes a long time for people to get to the point,'' says Elizabeth Ferrarini, a communications consultant who teaches business communication at Northeastern University in Boston. "Messages are very circuitous. It's incredibly annoying.''
When we stop talking and start typing, inverse tendencies seem to emerge. E-mail tends to be curt and reactive, missing the kind of human touch - facial expressions, vocal timbre - that make communication productive, says Blondeau.
"(The Internet is) a very cold medium. Gone are the days when we thought about what we were saying. When you're getting 80 messages a day you need to respond to, it doesn't allow you to move to critical analysis.''
It's a broken kind of communication. Ask three questions in an e-mail, for example, and you may well get only one answer, prompting more messaging and growing frustration.
Sit on an e-mail too long before responding (more than a day or two) and you risk giving the impression you are ignoring people.
"People's tolerance for delay has gotten much shorter because e-mail has created the possibility of instant response,'' says Paul Levinson, a communications professor at New York's Fordham University and author of The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.
"People are operating on different conceptions of etiquette. One person treats e-mail as a conventional letter and doesn't respond right away and the sender sees it as rude.''
So what about that ringing phone that interrupted your conversation?
Experts say just let it go.
"The person in your office is the priority,'' says Ferrarini. "They've taken the time to be there. Be polite.''
But even if you already know that interrupting your guest to take a phone call is impolite, chances are you will probably pick up anyway. And you'll leave that cell phone on to ring in the movie theatre and interrupt the next phone conversation you have in order to take another call.
"It's like someone glancing over your shoulder at a cocktail party in case there's someone else more interesting than you to talk with."
- Grant McCracken
Cultural anthropologist
And the reason? Human nature, says Levinson, and the way technology tantalizes our inherent sense of mystery and optimism.
"All of us have these parts of our lives, these unfulfilled dreams, and a ringing phone offers that promise of fulfilment because we don't know who is on the other end,'' says Levinson.
"Even though 99 times out of 100 it is someone trying to sell you car insurance, all of those disappointments can't extinguish the hope that whoever is calling might be that long lost love or that great job offer - someone who will scratch one of our itches.''
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