It's amazing to consider the range of communications options at our disposal these days.  Even in my (still relatively brief) lifetime, the proliferation of telecommunications technology has been astounding.  Instead of making our communication easier, clearer, and cleaner, however, I've actually found that the myriad communications tools can actually complicate things a good bit.  As a society, we're still trying to make out the rules of engagement for all these different ways of keeping in touch.

Probably, everyone would realize that an SMS on one's mobile telephone to tell one's girlfriend, "im breaking up with u" is not a good idea (though I'm sure that this has been done).  And likewise, it's probably a bit ridiculous to set up an appointment to talk face-to-face about figuring out which movie theater showtime to go to (though I'm sure some neo-Luddites might prefer this!).  But how do we manage the wide spectrum of everything in between?

I was thinking it might be useful to develop a hierarchy of communications quality.  Maybe I could develop some kind of theory to make me a famous communications theorist (like Marshall McLuhan) -- or a psychologist with some standard scale named after me (like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs)!  Somebody's probably already beaten me to it.  But at any rate -- a simple list of what I'm thinking might go as follows (starting with the highest quality communication and descending to the lowest quality communication):

• Face-to-face
• Video-conferencing
• Voice-to-voice (telephone)
• Handwritten letter
• Type-written communication (including e-mail)
• Instant Messaging (internet chat)
• Mobile texting (SMS)
• Mass communication (TV, radio, etc.)

Of course, even within these categories, there would be distinctions.  Consider an expanded version of the first (top) three forms of communication listed above:

• Face-to-face one-on-one private conversation (deliberately scheduled)
• Face-to-face one-on-one private conversation (spontaneous)
• Face-to-face one-on-one semi-private conversation in a crowded room (spontaneous)
• Face-to-face group communication
• Video-conferencing on a high-speed internet connection with little to no interference
• Video-conferencing on a medium-speed internet connection with moderate interference
• Telephone call while stationary and undistracted
• Video-conferencing on a slow-speed internet connection with significant interference
• (Mobile) telephone call while traveling via train
• (Mobile) telephone call while traveling via automobile
• (Mobile) telephone call while traveling via bicycle

You get the idea.  Am I missing any significant forms of communication in my first listing?  What do you think about my rank-ordering system?  Basically, I'm going off the assumption that communication is 7 percent actual words, 38 percent tone-of-voice, and 55 percent non-verbals (according to research by UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian).  How do we figure out how to tell which people which things in which ways?

These are the times we live in...