When people exchange text messages or chat on some instant messaging platform, the communication feels removed and abstract. We see the words pop up but there is a strong and present understanding that we are perceiving only a representation as opposed to the other person. On the other hand, talking on the telephone or over video-chat feels more real somehow. This should hardly be shocking to anybody reading.
Incidentally, I spend a significant amount of time on the telephone.
A few days ago, I began to think about just how abstract a telephone conversation really is. Of course the representation is far more multidimensional than the plain-text methods of communication mentioned above. Nevertheless, you're not really with the other person. Ultimately, you're engaged with a machine. On the other end, a machine has taken note of what the other person sounds like and your little machine is only following those instructions to coldly reproduce the sounds for you. It's a fine imitation, but an imitation all the same.
Another reason that physical presence is so important, I suppose. To actually feel the other person's resonance when they talk. That human energy, it seems, cannot be replicated by telephones or by ever-increasingly-fast Internet lines piping in video. This has implications for considering the relative capabilities of virtual communities and actual physical communities, right?
Paradoxically, traditional letters offer greater authenticity in many ways. Setting aside the old fashioned charm of receiving one (we all know the feeling), consider that it really comes with part of the writer. The paper and envelope has been touched and handled, breathed upon. The message you ultimately receive carries part of the other person in a way that your telephone never can.
