Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Communication at the very core is one to one interaction. Typically interactions happen over one medium and are typically synchronous. For example two people could be talking and exchanging ideas or two people could be writing letters to each other to keep in touch. A lot of back and forth happens around a particular subject.

With advent of instant modes of communication (emails, phones, sms etc.), these conversations have became asynchronous. This is counter-intuitive. Conventional wisdom says that if we can talk instantaneously, the conversation can be closed right there. The outcome however is exactly opposite.

You receive a message over one of these many devices. You take time to deliberate and think. And then you reply over one of the devices. The conversation could have started on the phone and you could be adding onto the conversation using IM, SMS, email etc. And all of this is perfectly valid. This is where the shift has happened. Instead of using one device, we are open to using more devices. Services like BlackBerry are further enabling the process by synchronizing IM and emails.

Evolving still further, we now have reached a stage where we assume that communication can take place over many devices and all these devices are inter-connected. Both the sender and recipient assume that the other party understands that communication can happen over many mediums and thus relies on the delivery.

This for me is a paradigm shift that has happened in the way we communicate. Many devices, any modes and many connection points. Any thoughts?