Introduction

Have you ever felt the messages you convey are not communicated properly or have you ever
felt guilty of not conveying the message as it wants to be conveyed? If so it is because of your
weakness towards communication skills. Apart from the basic necessities, you need to be
equipped with habits for good communication skills, as this is what will make you a happy and
successful social being. In order to develop these habits, you need to first acknowledge the fact
that communication skills need an improvement from time to time. The only constant in life is
change, and the more you accept your strengths and work towards dealing with shortcomings,
especially in the area of communication skills, the better will be your interactions and the more
your social popularity. Thus the present unit enables you to get a detailed picture of the need and
importance of developing communication skills and feel confident and empowering to face any
type of situation in life.
We use communication usually to mean speaking or writing or sending a message to another
person. Communication is really much more than that. It involves a number of choices and
decisions but being natural and unnoticed in informal situations. In formal situations, our
communication needs to be more effective and carefully chosen, that is, we need to plan our
communication. Here comes the question what is Communication or how communication could
be defined?
Looked at more closely, what is essential for communication to occur is the cooperation between
two parties, one active or at the giving end and the other passive or at the receiving end.
The sender selects appropriate symbols to suit the situation and realizes the meaning through
speech or writing depending upon the socially regulated requirements or self-perceived needs. At
the receiving end the symbols are identified and identification obviously implies recognition and
realization of meaning through the interpretive process.
Communication is thus a network of interactions and naturally the sender and the receiver keep
on changing their roles. Another aspect of communication is the deployment of a code consisting
of arbitrarily evolved symbols and the determination of the appropriateness of their use in given
situations, leading to the emergence of diverse communication patterns. A number of factors
come into play in shaping these patterns. In fact, communication is often but not always

momentary. At times communication is a cumulative process that starts before the actual
communicative event takes place and continues after it has occurred. Thus communication
therefore must acquire a true perspective of not only the present requirements of the situation but
also its relationship with the past and its impact on the future.
Functions of Communication
New technology and social media sites are constantly changing, evolving and developing,
which means the face of personal communication is also changing. These changes often mean
people are having less and less face-to-face interaction, (Eastman, 2013).
It sounds so simple: say what you mean. But all too often, what we try to communicate gets lost
in translation despite our best intentions. We say one thing, the other person hears something
else, and misunderstandings, frustration, and conflicts ensue.
Fortunately, you can learn how to communicate more clearly and effectively. Whether youre
trying to improve communication with your spouse, kids, boss, or coworkers, you can improve
the communication skills that enable you to effectively connect with others, build trust and
respect, and feel heard and understood.
Communication is about more than just exchanging information. It's about understanding the
emotion and intentions behind the information. Effective communication is also a two-way
street. Its not only how you convey a message so that it is received and understood by someone
in exactly the way you intended, its also how you listen to gain the full meaning of whats being
said and to make the other person feel heard and understood. More than just the words you use,
effective communication combines a set of skills including nonverbal communication, engaged
listening, managing stress in the moment, the ability to communicate assertively, and the
capacity to recognize and understand your own emotions and those of the person youre
communicating with. Effective communication is the glue that helps you deepen your
connections to others and improve teamwork, decision making, and problem solving. It enables
you to communicate even negative or difficult messages without creating conflict or destroying
trust. While effective communication is a learned skill, it is more effective when its spontaneous
rather than formulaic. A speech that is read, for example, rarely has the same impact as a speech

thats delivered (or appears to be delivered) spontaneously. Of course, it takes time and effort to
develop these skills and become an effective communicator. The more effort and practice you put
in, the more instinctive and spontaneous your communication skills will become.
Function #1: Exchanging Information
Using text messages, talking on the phone, sending emails, instant messaging and chat rooms to
keep in contact with our friends, families and others are all services that use ICT, often but not
always over the internet. We can also share files and look at web pages using the internet. The
use of ICT to communicate provides a cheap and reliable set of services that spans the entire
world but it does mean that we have to be more organized and careful when using it than we
would normally be when, e.g. writing and posting a letter on paper.
Implications of technology on urban people
Periods of rapid transition have heuristic potentials. The velocity of change itself makes novel
patterns legible. When the object of study is cities, legibility is even more pronounced insofar as
the material reality of buildings, transport systems, and other components of spatial organization
are on the surface, so to speak. Simultaneous rapid transformation in several cities with
somewhat comparable conditions also makes the variability of such spatial outcomes visible,
even when they result from similar novel dynamics. Our global modernity is one of those periods
of rapid change. Major advances in building and other technologies have left a massive imprint
on urban space, (Sassen, 2012).
The limits of intelligent systems
Much of what is put under the smart city umbrella has actually been around for a decade or
more. Bit by bit (or byte by byte), we have been retrofitting various city systems and networks
with devices that count, measure, record, and connect. The current fashion, however, centers on a
costlier, difficult plan to implement vision. Rather than retrofitting old cities, the buzz today is
about building entire smart cities from scratch in a matter of a few years (hence the alternative
name instant city) at what seems to be an average price of US$30 to US$60 billion (23.5 to
47 billion). Building such a city is a daunting proposition. But I think the biggest challenge is

more conceptual: it is the need to design a system that puts all that technology truly at the service
of the inhabitants, and not the other way around: the inhabitants as incidental users.
What comes next is worrisome
The first phase of intelligent cities is exciting. The city becomes a living laboratory for smart
urban technologies that can handle all the major systems a city requires: water, transport,
security, and waste, green buildings, and clean energy. The acts of installing, experimenting,
testing, or discovering can all generate innovations, both practical and those that exist mainly in
the minds of weekend scientists. This is thrilling. And these are projects that will involve foreign
and local inventors, scientists, technologists, firms, artists, and curious tourists from around the
world. This phase is likely to create a public conversation, not just between the residents and the
citys leadership, but also horizontally, among citizens comparing notes. It could lead to a new
type of open-source network: instead of simply having IT workers detect and fix software and
recode to solve problems as they see them, there would be a collective upgrading and problemsolving dimension involving citizens, a sort of open-source urbanism.
The push to urbanize technology
We need to push this urbanizing of technology further, and in different directions.
Wherever I go in the world, I find at least some technologists, urbanites, and artists who are
beginning to urbanize technology. Cloud9, a Barcelona-based project that mixes science,
technology, and architecture is a good example, one that draws and needs all types of people
children, professionals, and tourists alike. When this happens, the city becomes a heuristic space;
it talks with the average resident or visitor rather than simply commanding them. The technology
becomes visible and explicit and can be understood by any passer-by. I have long thought that all
the major infrastructures in a city from sewage to electricity and broadband should be
encased in transparent walls and floors at certain crossroads, such as bus stops or public squares.
If you can actually see it all, you can get engaged. Today, when walls are pregnant with soft- and
hardware, why not make this visible? All of our computerized systems should become
transparent. The city would become literally a publicly shared domain.

The challenge for intelligent cities is to make the technologies they deploy responsive and
intellectually/practically available to the people whose lives they affect. Today, the tendency is to
make them invisible, hiding them beneath platforms or behind walls hence putting them in
command rather than in dialogue with users. This secluding of technologies reduces the
possibility that intelligent cities can promote open-source urbanism.
Communication and technology on rural people
Rural citizens stand to gain more than most, relatively, since the use of the Internet reduces, if
not removes, former barriers (particularly that of distance) to such interaction. To that extent, the
shrinking of the digital divide (and particularly the increased availability of broadband Internet
in the countryside) is very welcome, (Warren, 2003)
Improving communication skills #1: Become an engaged listener
People often focus on what they should say, but effective communication is less about talking
and more about listening. Listening well means not just understanding the words or the
information being communicated, but also understanding the emotions the speaker is trying to
communicate.
Theres a big difference between engaged listening and simply hearing. When you really listen
when youre engaged with whats being saidyoull hear the subtle intonations in someones
voice that tell you how that person is feeling and the emotions theyre trying to communicate.
When youre an engaged listener, not only will you better understand the other person, youll
also make that person feel heard and understood, which can help build a stronger, deeper
connection between you.
By communicating in this way, youll also experience a process that lowers stress and supports
physical and emotional well-being. If the person youre talking to is calm, for example, listening
in an engaged way will help to calm you, too. Similarly, if the person is agitated, you can help
calm them by listening in an attentive way and making the person feel understood.

Improving communication skills #2: Pay attention to nonverbal communications

When we communicate things that we care about, we do so mainly using nonverbal signals.
Nonverbal communication, or body language, includes facial expressions, body movement and
gestures, eye contact, posture, the tone of your voice, and even your muscle tension and
breathing. The way you look, listen, move, and react to another person tells them more about
how youre feeling than words alone ever can.
Developing the ability to understand and use nonverbal communication can help you connect
with others, express what you really mean, navigate challenging situations, and build better
relationships at home and work.

You can enhance effective communication by using open body languagearms

uncrossed, standing with an open stance or sitting on the edge of your seat, and
maintaining eye contact with the person youre talking to.

You can also use body language to emphasize or enhance your verbal messagepatting a
friend on the back while complimenting him on his success, for example, or pounding
your fists to underline your message.

Improving communication skills #3: Internet, emails and social media

Email is currently the most popular form of online communication, even after discounting the
large volume of spam messages sent. According to readwrite.com, about 188 billion emails are
sent out per day. In addition, there are three times as many email accounts as Twitter and
Facebook accounts combined.
Texting has also increased dramatically since it first came about in the 90s and is now used for
communicate more than calling someone is. More than 70 percent of people use their smart
phones to text, according to connectmogul.com.
Sending messages through social media sites, such as Facebook, is also taking the place of verbal
communication. More than four billion messages are sent daily over Facebook, according
to techcrunch.com.

The use of other social media sites, such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn has also
skyrocketed, diminishing verbal communication. More than 163 billion tweets have been sent
since Twitter was invented, averaging around 175 million tweets per day in 2012, according
to dazeinfo.com.
Summary
Fast, cheap global communications could reduce the need for travel, so pollution levels would
fall. (...) The ability to transfer information virtually, at high speed and almost no cost, and to
communicate effectively at a distance would allow companies to locate away from established
economic hubs, free workers to work from anywhere and, in doing so, reduce the environmental
impact of goods and people moving from place to place- Alakeson.
A sustainable information society is a society that makes use of ICTs and knowledge for
fostering a good life for all human beings of current and future generations by strengthening
biological diversity, technological usability, economic wealth for all, political participation of all,
and cultural wisdom. Achieving a sustainable information society costs, it demands a conscious
reduction of prots by not investing in the future of capital, but the future of humans, society,
and nature. Environmental problems are social problems, not technological problems, they are
neither caused by science and technology as such, nor can they be solved by science or
technology as such. Science and technology have due to their unsustainable social design
contributed to environmental degradation; they have been turned into destructive forces by social
forces. Heavy promotion of computer usage is not an appropriate means and automatism for
achieving ecological sustainability, the latter requires alternative models of economic production.
If humankind is interested in a sustainable society, the destructive character of the economy must
be sublated, new models of economic production and social relationships are needed.

References:
1. Eastman, Hayley. Communication changes with technology, social media. (2013).
Retrieved

March

15,

2016,

from

http://universe.byu.edu/2013/07/07/1communication-changes-with-technologysocial-media/

2. Sassen, Saskia Urbanising technology. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2016, from
https://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/urbanising-technology/en-gb/