One of the biggest problems my wife and I keep coming across in this supposedly ultra-communicative world is… lack of real communication. How can this be in a world filled with cellphones, IMs, Twitter, email, and even old-fashioned telephones? Actually, it’s very predictable. In effect, all this modern technology increases the noise to signal ratio while increasing the demands on personal time and decreasing the real and productive time for communication, while making live, real-time, person-to-person contact, especially in commerce and business, more and more difficult.

For example, because my wife suffers from asthma, she wanted to see if she could get a swine flu vaccination. Both the state health website and the local newspaper reported that vaccinations were available at certain hours from the hospital, a local pharmacy, and the health department. After getting periodic blood work at the hospital, she attempted to discover about getting a vaccination. After waiting some fifteen minutes to get an answer from a real live person, she was told that, contrary to published information, the hospital didn’t have the vaccine and that she would have to get it from a pharmacy or her private doctor. On her way home she stopped by the pharmacy, where, after waiting, she was told that they only gave “regular” flu vaccinations [which she already had]. Once at home, she made calls over an hour to the doctor’s office [calls necessitated by a continually busy line], only to discover that the only source of vaccine in the city was at the health department. Calls to various functionaries in the health department were rewarded with voice message after voice message, none of which answered her question, until some time later, she got a real person, who informed her that, first no one over 49 could get a vaccination, regardless of health conditions, and that, in fact, there was so little vaccine that only small children were being vaccinated. All in all, that process took close to two hours.

A month or so ago, I ordered a present for my brother from a company I’ve patronized for years. I attempted to order by telephone, but never could get through. So I tried the website and placed the order. Within minutes I had an order confirmation. Except… after a week, I had no shipment confirmation. So I tried to telephone…and again, after listening to various voice mail messages and punching buttons and waiting ten minutes… I was disconnected. I sent an email asking for an order status, and got no response, even after two days. I left a telephone message, since no real person would answer, and another two days passed with no response. I tried again, and after close to fifteen minutes waiting, a real person answered — and I stated the problem. She promised to look into it. Seven hours later, she called back, apologizing because it had taken six hours to get through to her own warehouse, but stating that the order had been sidetracked, but was now being packed and sent on its way. That was six days ago, and it hasn’t arrived at my brother’s house yet.

I could follow these examples with at least a half-dozen more, all of events in the past year and all involving similar problems. But what I want to know is why anyone in his or her right mind thinks that technology actually improves communications. Oh…it’s great for sending things to people… but for actually communicating… it seems to me that the inundation factor has effectively reduced two-way communications. I’m sure all the voice mail screens and messages reduce manufacturer and office costs… but they certainly increase my costs and waste more of my time, and that’s not so much cost-savings as cost-shifting.

Modern communications have many advantages, but when there’s a problem to be solved… the systems aren’t up to it… and don’t tell me that they’re saving me time. My computer saves me time; company voice response systems and voice menus and endless options waste that time.