Intrusive Communication, or 'stop touching me.'

It used to be that new forms of communication took a thousand years or so to develop, and so human beings, along with each form, would develop pretty hard-wired corresponding responses, as individuals and certainly as cultures.

I think safely the first form of communicating with each other was probably some sort of direct touch or physical contact, whether wanted or unwanted. Unwanted physical contact has been given the label of violence, and various defenses over the years are levied as culture gets advanced enough to do so.

The next method of communicating was probably SOME sort of symbolic communication. Probably was first talking, then pictorial scratching, then more fluid written symbolic language. Of course no linguist knows whether full language evolved first and then gradually writing or they happened together so I am guessing.

After the first ways of affecting one another (touch) started to take more symbolic form (language), who knows how many thousands of years ago (OK, yes I know exactly: 6 thousand years ago, sorry), I am sure things really took off in terms of options for communicating.

We started being able to communicate across time periods and physical locations, and affecting each other in very nonspecific ways: offending each other's sensibilities and whatnot, whatever that means, it got started after this major change.

The options didn't start changing until Thomas Edison. He invented some version of the telephone which ended up actually being the voice answering machine. Graham Bell passed him up with the telephone technology while Edison's sat there until the patent ran out and eventually it got picked up by the current voice mail technology.

When we picked up Edison's voice recording technology things started heating up. Previous social etiquette rapidly became outdated. For instance, a situation was created where we would leave our message for someone and not know whether or not they got it. This took us back a few centuries to the days that we all had to pay our own private couriers and hope for the best.

When we used to have to let it ring and ring and ring when we called someone or knock and know they hadn't come to the door, we knew that we would need to try back. Now we don't know exactly what to do.

Did they get our message or not?

Maybe we could call them back, but then, but would they get annoyed with us for bugging them?

In my personal opinion 'screening calls' should be accompanied with the social contract that we would return them when we get the chance, but often that is put off indefinitely, and our callers are left with a dilemma: do we make sure we communicate or do we make sure the people we are trying to affect don't get defensive?

As options other than violence evolved to be employed to affect others negatively, they develop other corresponding defenses. Physical armor initially developed to protect our bodies, and other physical defenses like a mote and bailey developed to protect our homes. But we needed new defenses needed for the new communications too, it seemed, and so people started to do somewhat routine and predictable things to hide from each other verbally like they had hidden from potential harm physically. Previous armor or caves became not being accessible by the new technologies.

Did you ever get a bill in the mail where your immediate reaction was 'what and the &*5^ is this and immediately looked for the 1-800 number to call, and it wasn't there, it said 'for comments write...somewhere in Wilmington, DE or Fargo, ND" NO ONE is going to put a stamp on an envelope and send it in the mail when they have an issue with a bill anymore. It is just not an option. I think it is because we associate 'getting on the horn' with what we do to be immediately contentions--to go to war.

And as soon as there are warriors, there are those who want to make sure that they are peace makers. As soon as email came about it seemed to replace calling on the phone as something good to do when calling on the phone seemed too intrusive. Calling had itself replaced physically putting on our hat and lipstick and going over to do our business in person, but now that email is an option, calling itself seems too intrusive, more like something we would do only when we had a seriously personal or emotional issue. Instead, we can now leave people an email and avoid the awkwardness of forcing them to respond in person.

Then in the past LESS THAN A YEAR probably, there have been even more changes. There was the group email thread, the bulletin board, and now the blog. And after how many thousands of years, sorry 6 thousand years, we have a brand new method of basically 'reaching out to touch someone' in some way.

I noticed how much I myself had changed when I felt that actually emailing Amy to ask her for advice on my blog was too much of an imposition, and that maybe she wouldn't mind if I left her a post on Donna's blog instead.

I think even though I don't want to admit it, as much as things change, they probably, as long as we are human, remain the same.