The Lost Art

Somehow today I am feeling sad.  I am currently watching several conversations on forums, conversations by people I know and a few that I don't.  The topic is one that is important to each of us on the forum, and one that needs to be discussed.  There is a lot of useful information being introduced, but it somehow becomes lost in emotional verbiage.  Unfiltered emotion creeps in and is misinterpreted.  Supporting information is omitted. The tone becomes ambiguous and is interpreted differently by each reader.  People get hurt and strike back against what they felt were attacks.

Have we, in our transition to instant electronic transfers of information, lost the art of communication?  I fear we may have.  We often type on forums using the patterns that we use to speak, and that is something that generally did not happen in a time when we put pen to paper to communicate with others.  Because it is so easy to pour one's thoughts and feelings out on a screen and press a button, there feels like there is very little reflection on how our words may be interpreted by others.

This is not to say that conversations via postal mail and editorials in newspapers and newsletters did not get heated, (a review of diaries and journals and newspapers even 100 years ago would prove that) but rather that it is difficult to have a "flame war" when the distance between responses is counted in days rather than seconds.

For the majority of my life I have utilized computers and the internet for writing and communication, going back to my BBS and sites like CompuServe and Q-Link, but my main method of communication during those early days was still by handwritten letters and notes.  As a writer I still feel that I communicate better when putting my words to paper - I struggle to write online in what I consider an "appropriate tone."  But then, I am of a different generation than most of the people I know, a member of "the lost generation" who grew up straddling the "space age" of the 60's and 70s and the "information age" of today.

Even writing this, on my laptop while sitting in my living room, I feel like I'm not saying what I want to say.  I feel like, at my desk with pen and paper I would be more eloquent.  My writing style here seems distant and stilted.

I wonder what other people think.  Has the method of transmission changed the way that we communicate with others?  Does instant communication lead to more conflict?  Is there a way to effectively communicate in this new world?