Conscious Communicators

How good and effective communicators are we?

In this time of modern technology, where all possible gadgets of communication are invented to facilitate and fast track our communication with one another in any part of the globe we are confronted with this question: how effective communicators have we become with all these modern gadgets at our disposal? The presence of modern technology may generate effective communication on the technical level but not always on the personal aspect of communicative relationship. As a matter of fact, it can become a hindrance to cultivate a more meaningful relationship with others. This is true with television, computers, Internet and minds you, even cell phones.

Listen to this conversation between a father and his son. (This is a true story, by the way). The boy asks his father to buy him a cell phone. The father asked: “What for?” The boy answered: “My classmates have a cell phone, while I don’t. Besides, I want to call you just what my classmates do their father.” The boy’s father looked at his son with a smile and said: “Son, you don’t need a cell phone to call me. We live together, and we see and talk to each other all the time, don’t we?”

It is amazing how text messaging through cell phones has become the new craze in town. Talk about fashion. As someone observing through the sidelines, I sometimes experience annoyance and amusement all at the same time. I am amuse to see young boys and girls, students and adults (and in some occasion even priests and nuns!) so taken up by text messaging. They keep on tinkering with their cell phones even while they are walking. I am just amazed they don’t bump onto something! They do so even in a meeting, inside the theater and horror of horrors, even inside the Church! It is indeed annoying to hear the sound of cell phone going off while in the Church attending mass. There are also some people who talk very loud on the phone. Some times I wonder whether radiation causes cell phone users to forget they are not the only living being in this planet.

Since it is no longer expensive, cell phones, like computer and television have become accessible even to average income families and to most people a necessity that one can do without.

Modern gadgets are supposed to help us facilitate our way of communicating with others. But sometimes we take them as an excuse to distance ourselves from people. It can happen that we prefer to use the phone because we do not want to face the person. Or we use the e-mail because we do not want to hear the voice of the other. Or we remain in the comfort zone of our own rooms lost in the world of cyberspace because we do not want to interact with others. As conscious and responsible communicators, we are challenged to use technology to enhance our way of communicating and thus grow in our communicative relationships with one another.