Why audio-based communication sucks
I hate voice messages. Why would I listen to your 3 minutes rant when I could have read your text in 10 second instead, and get the same information? Because voice messages doesn’t force the sender to distill their thoughts. All the mental workload of summarizing is transferred to the receiver, who have to process unorganized discourse. This lack of distillation also makes voice messages’ signal-to-noise ratio pretty low; they are full of filler words, repetition, hum, you know… And voice messages are so sloooooooooow. That’s why people listen to them at 2x or 3x, in the restroom, while doing other more important things.
Hence, audio-based communication is:
- disorganized
- noisy
- slow
On the other hand, text-based communication is:
- structured
- clean
- fast
I mean, look at this article with all its fancy titles and bullet points! Writing anything, even a text message, forces you to gather your thoughts. As a consequence, the signal-to-noise ratio is also higher. The mere act of transforming thoughts into written form filters a lot. And since information is condensed, text-based communication is faster to process.
Why audio-based communication is awesome
I hate voice messages, but I love listening to music. Sounds can convey so many emotions. When you call someone, you can ear their unique voice, feel their warmth, grasp their fears and desires. Speaking and listening is also hands-free and eyes-free. Pretty useful because it allow us to do other things simultaneously. And we can do that because it’s cognitively so light. Indeed, we‘ve developed complex language around 50 millennia ago, and as mammals, we’ve been making sounds for way longer.
Hence, audio-based communication is:
- emotional
- attention-free
- effortless
On the other hand, text-based communication is:
- impersonal
- demanding
- exhausting
When I say “I’m fine”, it can have dozens of meanings depending on my intonation. But express emotions when you write is harder, and often less subtle, like “I’m fine 🥳” or “I’m fine 😭“. Ursula Le Guin, expresses it perfectly in her book, Steering The Craft:
[…] when we read, we don’t have the speaker’s voice and expression and intonation to make half-finished sentences and misused words clear. We have only the words.
Reading and writing are also more demanding because they require visual attention and manual input. Talking with someone while driving is fine. Reading, or writing is not. We started writing only 5 millennia ago so it’s quite new to our mammals brain, which make it exhausting. This is why some many people read in bed to fall asleep.
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