“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Communications between a Mars Colony and it’s ancestors on Earth might be more civil. Certainly more considered.
I avoid using voice communication (let alone video calling) if I have the choice, in part because it’s true realtime, compared to SMS or email. I can send a text and be perfectly okay with not getting a reply for minutes or hours; an email may not be answered for days.
That gives plenty of time for thought, research, or just blowing off an unwanted conversation until one feels more up to it. Considering how often I need that leeway, I’m not about to begrudge anyone else taking advantage of it.
There are situations where instantaneous feedback is essential, but for me that’s a lot less common that a lot of the people I have to deal with seem to think.
I pretty much agree. It’s part of the reason why I prefer to live in one of the unshaven armpits of the universe.
There is also the experience I have had that the same people that will lie repeatedly in a Verbal interaction will run from putting anything in writing.
A long-time friend of Libertarian persuasion liked to insert the following in landline telephone conversations: “Revolution! Revolution! Revolution! Hello NSA!” and then go on with the banal conversation about table-top RPG gaming.
Why? The point that there just wasn’t enough processing power for the eavesdroppers to understand all of the raw data they were harvesting — much less process it. It was a Golden Age of Freedom on the Internet. Even then I had a dark foreboding that sooner or later the gap would be overcome and Big Brother™ would return. I just didn’t expect that it would be a coalition of coopted businesses and Quasi-NGOs that would lead the attacks on freedom.
A bad thing? I’m reminded of this:
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Communications between a Mars Colony and it’s ancestors on Earth might be more civil. Certainly more considered.
I avoid using voice communication (let alone video calling) if I have the choice, in part because it’s true realtime, compared to SMS or email. I can send a text and be perfectly okay with not getting a reply for minutes or hours; an email may not be answered for days.
That gives plenty of time for thought, research, or just blowing off an unwanted conversation until one feels more up to it. Considering how often I need that leeway, I’m not about to begrudge anyone else taking advantage of it.
There are situations where instantaneous feedback is essential, but for me that’s a lot less common that a lot of the people I have to deal with seem to think.
I pretty much agree. It’s part of the reason why I prefer to live in one of the unshaven armpits of the universe.
There is also the experience I have had that the same people that will lie repeatedly in a Verbal interaction will run from putting anything in writing.
A long-time friend of Libertarian persuasion liked to insert the following in landline telephone conversations: “Revolution! Revolution! Revolution! Hello NSA!” and then go on with the banal conversation about table-top RPG gaming.
Why? The point that there just wasn’t enough processing power for the eavesdroppers to understand all of the raw data they were harvesting — much less process it. It was a Golden Age of Freedom on the Internet. Even then I had a dark foreboding that sooner or later the gap would be overcome and Big Brother™ would return. I just didn’t expect that it would be a coalition of coopted businesses and Quasi-NGOs that would lead the attacks on freedom.