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Owin Buschur
English 111
Professor Lisinicchia
24 October 2016
What is the Cost of Electronic Communication?
In the last several decades, the world has experienced a revolution in the ways that people
interact and communicate. People have gone from meeting others in person and having face to
face conversations to the almost overwhelmingly, and sometimes exclusive, use of such
electronic means of communication as email, instant messaging, texting on cellphones, and the
ever-changing forms of online social media. This sudden shift has serious repercussions in
regards to the ability for people, especially children, to communicate effectively and normally in
person both now and in the future. If you are wondering just how big of an issue this is, look at
how children elementary age and younger are using computers, tablets, or their parents phones.
Constantly staring at a screen obviously does nothing to improve their personal communication
skills. If you need a more personal example think of all the times in your own life that you have
experienced miscommunication due to email or a text conversation on a cellphone. Eventually
people are going to have to ask themselves whether their convenience is worth missing out on
the chance to connect with new people or at least get a chance to exam the personalities of
others. The use of electronic communication can allow us to improve efficiency and do thing that
before its introduction we never dreamed of, however if it is not used carefully it will come at the
steep price of peoples ability to socialize and connect through conversation person to person
rather than through some text or a few pictures on a screen. Although this problem has not
immediately become serious it is steadily gaining momentum. People must eventually decide if

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the cost is worth it. Whether that means that they must do so five or fifty years from now is
immaterial, because the way technology has been changed and adapted into our day to day lives
means that this is an issue that is here to stay until people are able or willing to come together
and find a solution.
The use of text and picture to transmit basic ideas may not seem like anything new and it
should not because is not. People have after all been used letters and pictures in books and on
tablets for millennia to store and transmit information. The problem with electronic
communication is that people are beginning to rely upon it as their sole means of exchange. Lets
face it no written sentence or snippet of video can replace the transmission that occurs when
people interact face to face. For this very reason, letters, have never taken the place of
conversation in the way that text and email have begun to as late. In addition, books and pictures
have never been used for or relied upon as the sole media of instruction or exchange except in
the most extenuating of circumstances. So why do people choose to try to do so now with videos
and online material? They rely upon electronic communication because it is convenient and
people being the enterprising (lazy) beings that they are enjoy this convenience. This
convenience does come at a cost. By relying solely on digital communication the personal
communication skills of not just the generations being raised with it are put at risk, but also the
skills of the ones who are implementing it meaning, generally the adults, are also if not risked
strained. Anyone who can read knows that text can carry ideas from one person to the next since
that is the whole purpose of written language, but they also know that it does not always fully
show the emotions or the feeling of the people communicating in the same way that face to face
can.

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An excellent place in which the difference between face to face and electronic
communication can easily be seen is in a workplace when workers are collaborating on a group
project. When workers are communicating face to face they can bounce ideas back and forth and
receive almost constant feedback. They are also able to get a feel for how their team members
feel about what they are doing. This could mean anything from how confident they feel about
their work so that the rest of the team knows that they may have preform extra work to knowing
if the other team members are holding up their end and working instead of just saying that they
are. The fact that ec can cause such grave miscommunication could in things as simple as
whether they are meeting their deadlines or whether the team member understands the technical
details of what the team is trying to accomplish means that anyone who wants to rely on ec
should at least think about possible costs. When people collaborate or when they communicate
through electronics this constant stream of information does not exist. This can have an adverse
impact on peoples work ethic for example a small study in COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
showed that the use of virtual teams, which are facilitated solely through electronic
communication, for collaboration on projects could lead to significant drops in quality and
productivity as well as encouraging team members to act as free riders (Emmeline 93-95). In
addition, if there are any technical problems even larger delays or problems can develop. It isnt
hard to realize that a server crashing or a power outage doesnt have any effect on the ability of
people working in the same room to hold a conversation while the same thing happening to
someone using electronic communication could leave them out of luck and if the project is
critical enough may even out of a job.
Electronic communication is much more susceptible to data breaches then face to face
and other analog forms of communication. Just to give an example of the differences in security

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of electronic systems and face to face consider this, if you were to fill out a medical form face to
face you would probably do so on paper. A paper form very simply cannot be hacked, meaning
that the only way for someone with nefarious intent to access the information contained on it
would be to go to the place it is physically stored and then record the information they want. If
this same information was transmitted electronically it would more likely than not pass through a
computer network as that is increasingly becoming the trend in the types of places youd be
filling out forms, mostly at clinics or in the healthcare system (Groshong 144). Since this
hypothetical information is passing through a computer network it means that anyone with
access to said network, authorize or not, would be able to gain it. It is also important to note that
this risk grows exponentially the more networks the information traverses. This means that if the
party stores the information uses the services of a totally unrelated third party to do and that third
party suffers a security breach by extension, the information could also suffer from a breach in
security. The fact that the information is being passed between so many parties is also of great
concern for those who value their privacy as each time it is handed off to someone else it is at
risk of being exposed through user or system errors (Groshong 144).
Another probably one of if not the most obvious problems that people who communicate
through electronics (especially computer systems) must be able to contend are risk of technical
failures or issues that these types of systems are all prone experience from time to time. A quote
from an article in COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM to give the reader and idea of how many
problems can occur in data centers which are the backbone of most electronic communication today
(think email, amazon, etc) Datacenter networks are subject to power failure, misconfigurations,

firmware bugs, topology changes, cable damage, and malicious traffic. (Bailis 50) Although it
can be argued that face to face communication has its own technical issues at least their

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resolution is up to the people who are trying to communicate not the whims and the budget of
whoever owns or maintains the network.
To someone considering the argument made above it might begin to seem like people are
acting a little crazy for using electronic communication to such a great extent, but electronic
communication does have some redeeming qualities. For instance, electronic communication in
the form of texting or email can make it easy to send a message to someone who is busy right
now and then wait for a reply. This can allow more people to be contacted at a time since the
sender does not have to contact each person individual and hold an actual conversation to get the
main points across sort of like giving them a pamphlet. The point here being that if you need to
alert someone to a development or give them general information electronic communication can
be a useful tool.
Electronic communication also makes it much easier to share data in bulk forms, albeit at
greater risk, such as in spread sheets, forms, charts, or in the forms of file archives. Electronic
communication is also good at bridging geographic distances. For example, consider how
customer service and call centers have the ability of providing help, support, and advice from
hundred or even thousands of miles away from the physical location that the customer is calling
from. This does not only apply to call centers this ease of access is relevant in any work setting
where large amounts of information need to be shared this is extremely visible in the
programming or engineering fields where industry leaders and even government funded groups
such as NASA are beginning to hybridize their face to face and electronic communication since
doing so can greatly improve efficiency (Mark 90). The ability to disseminate information over
such immense distances and the ways that electronic communication can be used to easily send
and receive messages are the attributes that makes electronic communication such an attractive

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option. Without leaving their desk an employee could theoretically contact anyone in the
company.
This impersonal and mass sharing of information is also the attributes that make people
feel isolated (Pillis 93). The reasons for this are very simple if you are a great distance away from
someone you are probably not going to be able to get a good feel for someone elses
circumstance or situation and youre are not going to be able to socialize. When this type of
communication is received as a message in an inbox a time delay is by necessity added. This
only serves to exasperate the problem causing the communication to break down as each side is
essentially saying their part and then waiting for the other partys response, this doesnt leave any
room response or conversation and is essentially a monologue (Zachary 88). A monologue does
not support discussion and is not a good way to promote understanding or dialogue and in doing
so it does not help to solve issues or problems (Zachary 88).
People need to think more about the consequences as well as the reasons for their reliance
on electronic communication. Of these consequences, the most important, electronic
communications effects on peoples ability to communicate and socialize normally. Although
there are some compelling reasons to use the various forms of electronic communication there
are also many good reasons to communicate face to face. Electronic communication is nothing
more and nothing less than a tool and should be used as such and while people are using it they
must remember that as with everything else in the world its use causes a certain amount of risk in
information security and with a variety of other issues. The unwitting misuse of electronic
communication is a major factor in limiting such types of communications effectiveness since it
can cause the people to feel isolated and cause them to miscommunicate. It seems rather foolish
to neglect the way that people have always communicated, face to face, in favor of a relatively

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new communication form thats effects we are just beginning to study. Think of it like this most
people would not sign a contract or celebrate an event by letter so why would they not show the
same level of respect in their day to day lives. Our day to day interaction often have effects
reaching further then we realize so wouldnt it be prudent to treat them in the same way. Before
someone decides to send an email, post a message, or if they use electronic to communicate at all
they need to consider whether it will fully communicate the message intended.

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Work Cited
Bailis, Peter and Kingsbury, Kyle. "The Network Is Reliable." Communications Of The
ACM 57.9 (2014): 48-55. Applied Science & Technology Source. Web. 30 Oct. 2016.
Groshong, Laura and David, Phillips. "The Impact Of Electronic Communication On
Confidentiality In Clinical Social Work Practice." Clinical Social Work Journal 43.2 (2015): 142150. Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 30 Oct. 2016.
Mark, Gloria. "Extreme Collaboration." Communications Of The ACM 45.6 (2002): 8993. Corporate ResourceNet. Web. 30 Oct. 2016.
Pillis, Emmeline de, and Kimberly Furumo. "Counting The Cost Of Virtual Teams."
Communications Of The ACM 50.12 (2007): 93-95. Applied Science & Technology Source.
Web. 30 Oct. 2016
Zachary, Lois J. "A Little More Conversation." T+D 66.10 (2012): 88-89. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 30 Oct. 2016