TALKING ABOUT TALK

It's the last warm night for a while and so feeling a litle too over
energic go to sleep I figured I'd yabber at the internet, or not
seeing as Aussies.space still isn't working again yet. So I'm coming
to from that old 486 laptop I keep in my bedroom that doesn't like
the cold. I thought I'd try the teenager posture - lying stomache
down on bed with a pilow under my chest and leaning up to the
keyboard, but I don't think it's going to last because it's a
strain on the shoulders and frankly male getitalia are in the wrong
position for this stance.

Actually that makes me think, most over energetic, and frankly
sexually frustrated, people probably have a different use for a
laptop while on their bed. But I'm going to write about methods
of human communication.

The idea of synchronous and asynchronous communications is something
that I think about a lot. I always tend to avoid synchronous
communication wherever possible. Phone calls, IRC, even talking in
person, are all offputting. Partly it's because I like to be exact
in my meaning and I hate the potential for miscommunication when
I don't have time to compose things thoughtfully, but to a large 
extent it's also something of a lack of confidence that I have in
myself. I don't really trust myself not to get talked into things
and really control my own voice in a conversation unless I have lots
of time to consider each exchange. Often, such as on Usenet and to
a lesser extent here, I actually conclude that there's no point
saying anything in the first place. That's mostly what I do in
real life conversations as well, and in a way I respect myself
more for staying quiet much of the time because it always strikes
me that there's very little point to the vast majority of the talk
that goes on in the world.

But then there are the other people who favour instant
communication. They prefer to phone up support lines rather than
send emails when things go wrong, and use IRC, as well as the
more in-between services like Twitter and SMS. I'm not sure whether
I'm right, but I've come to think of these preferences as a
fairly fundamental identifier of the type of person someone is
overall. I feel like the synchronous people are the more scatter
brained sorts, unreliable and scarilly unpredictable, but also
intimmidating in that they can arrange things quickly and
adaptively, whereas I plod along ditherring at every stage.

I'm truely a little scared of the synchronous type of person. Also,
I often feel like they're in the majority. Maybe I'm wrong here
too, but I feel like the embrace of things like Twitter and Facebook
over Usenet emphasises a preference for faster moving discussion.
I'm surely abnormally unwilling to contribute to in-person group
discussions.

Well I can't think of a good conclusion for this. I'm more tired
now, and there are little bugs that have squeezed through the fly
screen on the open bedroom window which are driving me nuts. So
I'll leave this on that slightly down note and do my pre-bed push
ups before entering into that distinctly uncommunicative state that
all sorts of people, asynchronous or otherwise, share nightly.

 - The Free Thinker