A New Oral Culture
oblomovka.com
oblomovka.com
There is one co-worker who always wants to huddle if any Slack thread gets busy. In a complete separate conversation they told me that they are a hunt and peck typist. This person is an incredible engineer.
I put 2 and 2 together. In Slack conversations I am absolutely burying them in paragraphs of text because I can type quite fast. They can’t keep up.
I’m sure there are also other factors like language proficiency, written communications skills, etc. But I think the lack of typing proficiency may pushing people away from written communication.
Outside of the workplace, people who do not even have keyboards (phone/tablet only) may be contributing less to text chat conversations than others. They are also the people who only use voice messages.
Hunt and peck is perfectly functional for most typing. People can hunt and peck quite quickly.
The question is do you type slowly or quickly, not which method you use.
Whether the problem genuinely needs that much context to explain or you are flooding them with low signal logorrhea (another common problem), both cases are solved with an in-person or audio chat.
They were so good I’m now convinced that a slack thread that gives everyone context that then jumps into a huddle at the right time is more effective than scheduled meetings.
My takeaway from this has been to prefer short, highly-formatted emails over meetings and chat. I put the "Bottom Line Up Front", try to limit paragraphs to two sentences (takeaway and detail), use indentation to indicate which sentence(s) are less important, and always direct questions at a particular person.
Email allows slow readers, slow thinkers, and slow writers to ingest, digest, and respond at their own pace.
I disagree with the author's hope for AI. "Orality" doesn't leave room for deep thought. It demands immediate response. It rewards those who keep talking. It doesn't allow for linking and references. While we're getting AI that can show how it arrived at a response, and AI that can summarize your spoken words, we don't have AI that can show how you arrived at your response. That's on you.
Doing that is the equivalent of going into a meeting and using your loudest voice to monologue everything you have to say without giving anyone else a chance to speak. It’s a filibuster tactic that results in forcing everyone else to shut up. Communication is not a competition to see who can win by speaking the fastest and loudest.
I get your point that lack of typing ability probably makes some people avoid text chat, but in your example, switching to a voice chat is definitely the right approach to cut off that behavior.
Then, requests to have oral conversations outside of scheduled meetings usually means something derailed.
Either they're about to say something that can't be left in writing, or they intend to have a discussion that they shouldn't be having in the first place (they'll ask for something I'll probably have to refuse). Or things got awry enough that speed matters over tracability and transparency, and we're basically in red alert.
Right now I think "can we have a quick call" in a single message without any other context is probably the most dreadful thing to say to someone at work.
The example I'm thinking of from my own experience is the "roger" or "message received" confirmation, or lack thereof. In email, Slack, and other writing-first communication channels, the default behavior is not to confirm that you've received a message.
In emails, because it's unclear if replying "got it/okay/received" is socially acceptable – or if it isn't, and just adding an unnecessary message to their busy inbox. Slack sort of solves this with the reactions, but even then, enforcing this across all company communication channels feels heavy handed.
Compare this to a quick Zoom call / Slack hangout, where I can tell you something and immediately know that you've heard me. I still might need to remind you later, but that's a reminder, not a check to see if you got the message in the first place.
In practice there's a ton of Slack messages I write that have no reaction whatsoever, but if they're in a thread with new messages coming after, we can all assume people commenting have read what was said before. That's the basic structure of a conversation.
Announcements kind of messages, sent in isolation, are more tricky. But then, if it matters to have a reaction, we get used to explicitely ask for it IMHO (e.g. some event needs to be acknowledged), and it's kinda the same in a real time meeting: you'll also make sure people are listening and understood your announcement, and not doing something else on the side.
IME this actually isn't always the case, especially if it's a busy channel. And so it ends up being more effective to just book a 15 minute Zoom call with someone if you need to actually get their attention, rather than put a message in a channel and/or privately.
In general the cost of having a separate meeting is kinda high (apart from booking the spot, it generally also means an agenda and a transcript)
> It’s so flammable, right now, too. We talk and then suddenly misunderstand, and the misunderstandings jump from conversation to conversation faster than we can track. No-one is on the same page, because there are no pages — just scrolling and backscrolls.
Is the author's final point that we might use LLMs to help deal with these issues? Perhaps so, but I think instead of asking how to simply cope with it, we might ask ourselves what the underlying reasons are and how to deal with them.
I do agree with them though, in that we often subject ourselves to too much noise, and not enough signal (meaningful, productive conversations and relationships) but what would introducing LLMs really do here? Allow us to more efficiently consume noise, and maybe respond more verbosely to the signal, just resulting in more noise? On the other hand, trying to, for example, build communities where people can develop meaningful connections with people, have substantive conversations, and grow with each other, might produce better results.
You can help fight it back. Next time someone sends you a message with a vague request - ask for a ticket with proper description. Next time someone suggests groundbreaking idea - ask for RFC with details. Next alignment meeting with 10 people where only one or two are talking - ask whether email will suffice.
I suspect Günter Grass was a fan too. Meyn the trumpeter in "the tin drum" and his lifestyle.
His life work has a lot of relevance to the notion of oral culture inasmuch as Spike was a superlative orator and racounteur, and I think - if you don't know of Spikes' relationship with Oblomov - you're in for a treat ... ;)
There are different ends of the 'reproducibility spectrum' that Spike will take you to, though ..