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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

It actually kind of saddens me to read his summary of how touch will be "awesome". A teenager is afraid to talk to a girl he likes so he sends her what amounts to a text on his watch? It feels like humans keep building more and more barriers to ACTUAL communication. I can't help but think at some point it will have serious negative effects on the human race. Part of growing up and maturing is learning to deal with difficult emotional situations, like being rejected by the girl you really have a crush on.

What happens the first time that kid who was too afraid of rejection to talk to a girl he liked messes up in his "grown-up" job? Is he going to send his boss an apology over his watch? Or is going to break down in tears because he's never had to deal with an emotionally stressful situation "IRL"?

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I was the typical nerdy, shy, socially inept teenager who read the z80 instruction set documentation alone at the cafeteria during lunch. In the 10th grade there was this girl I really liked, but my complete lack of social skills prevented me from acting upon it.

I forget how, but I eventually found a way to add her on MSN messenger, where we spent many evenings and weekends chatting. This allowed me to get over my initial shyness; we eventually dated for about a year. She was my first girlfriend, and I gained a lot in self confidence and social skills through this experience.

I don't lock myself in the bathroom when I mess up at my job these days.

I think your message is either a silly straw man, or that you really don't get teenagers.

...But in this case, you'll first have to work up the guts to go ask her for her phone number, so that you can go back to your desk and send her your heartbeat.

That's the thought that popped into my head too. The same kid at a job after college. He screws up so he sequesters himself in the bathroom and has to be coaxed out with the right combination of soothing texts and vibrations.

On the other hand, there have always been non-verbal ways to communicate. Note-passing was common when I was in school. Presumably the boy with the crush on the girl who is sending the texts on his watch is trying to create an "IRL" relationship with her.

The person in your first example likely has autism. Your average person, no matter how much of an introvert, would never need to be coaxed out of the bathroom with the right combination of texts and vibrations. Normal speech works just fine on even the most introverted people. Introverts of that nature aren't afraid of people talking to them nicely or trying to calm them down, they're afraid of interaction. Being talked to with no expectation of a response is not interaction.

Why does everyone keep saying that every single new technology is going to kill face to face communication? Have you ever had a face to face conversation? That's not going anywhere. SMS didn't do it, MSN/AOL didn't do it, iMessage didn't do it, Facebook didn't do it. Hell we're even going in the opposite direction: Tinder exists solely to facilitate face to face (more or less) interactions.

Communication technologies do not make people unable to have normal conversations. It's just not happening. AIM was released 18 years ago, Usenet existed long before that, and written notes were quite common for hundreds of years.

Vaccines don't give you autism and neither does written communication.

I was joking about the bathroom example.

I figured as much, but the fear I see in this thread overall is pretty crazy to me.

I have had several employees in their early 20s that would only communicate with suppliers over email - I had to force them to use the phone. It was bizarre.

Phones are unprofessional and slow and impolite, and even if its legal, recording is just socially not done other than call center script readers.

On the other hand, supplier writes in an email that he's shipping the microcontroller PCBs tomorrow, no kidding this time, you have a written record you can call him out on maybe the day after tomorrow, and unlike verbal phone calls no one freaks out if you stockpile emails, in fact its pretty much accepted. And this is exactly why someone lying to you or stretching the truth or making stuff up will refuse to do business by email and insist on using the phone.

So your employees are in cognitive dissonance... you're trying to set them up to fail and they're either going to be annoyed or offended or even worse, apathetic about it.

"you are trying to set them up to fail.." - a bit of a stretch don't you think?

I am referring to picking up the phone to call a supplier or similar. Basic commerce, not some elaborate plot to annoy, offend or cause apathy. More like "Bob, do you have blue widgets in stock?"

Phones are not unprofessional, they are a tool. A communication tool. Phones are not slow, in fact they are a lot faster than waiting for an email that never comes.

Part of learning to deal with difficult emotional situations is having a gradient of intensity that allows one to build confidence rather than being overwhelmed or crushed.

Teenagers already do everything they can to moderate this. And plenty of people actually fail to learn to deal with rejection. Providing another mechanism that makes the learning curve smoother is more likely to help than to exacerbate the problem.

  It feels like humans keep building more and more barriers to ACTUAL communication.

Yeah, yeah. It's not like shy kids back in the 1600s didn't write sonnets to express how they felt. Communication is a living language.

"Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born." - Alan Kay

> barriers to ACTUAL communication

I'm not sure what you mean here. Email, text messages, watch taps, Facebook likes, Twitter favourites, etc. are all forms of communication. Sure, they aren't face-to-face verbal communication. But that doesn't meant that when I'm having a Skype chat with my deaf grandfather in New Zealand 20 000 km away I'm not communicating. You seem to be making the mistake of privileging your preferred method of commuication over all others, and deciding that none of the other ways of iteracting are ACTUAL communication. This just isn't true.

However, I'm sure in the future we'll have people complaining that direct mind-communication via neural stimulation implant isn't ACTUAL communication, not like Apple Watch taps or instant messaging ;)

Replace these watch interactions with the less recent technology of "passing notes." I don't think the character in Gruber's story would have walked up to her and given her a kiss on the cheek if not for the watch standing in his way. I think he would have done nothing or found some other indirect means. And think about the story in the context of what he says about the phone and talking and video chat and seeing— it actually feels like you're being touched to enough of a degree that this interaction is more intimate. Mediation by technology is not inherently distancing.

Honestly, I think this social interaction talk is overblown. I was an original Pebble backer, and I've stopped using it because it's actually a greater physical barrier than a phone when you're sat talking to someone. Notifications are even more obtrusive, not less.

I wouldn't say it's a barrier, but a complement. An outlet for people to express themselves where none previously existed.

Yes the quality of communication is far lower, however if he wouldn't have otherwise approached her in person, then isn't this better than not having it?

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