Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    I am particulary interested in communicating via the tube.  I subscribe
    to a Videotex service and have established some good friendships
    with people I have yet to meet.
    
    I find it much easier to correspond by this means then to communicate
    face to face.You do not have to face any interruptions.  The written
    word generally requires more attention than the spoken word.  You
    are not inhibited by the body language of the person you are
    communicating with.
    
    Another good feature is you learn about a person's mind before you
    are prejudiced by their appearance.  This can work well in both
    directions.  You could be turned on by a pleasing physical appearance
    or turned off by a not so pleasing appearance.  The tube prevents
    this initial reaction and if and when you do meet the relationship
    has a strong foundation and is not handicapped by looks or lack
    off.
    
    I believe the things just discussed are true of professional as
    well as personal relationships.  There are a lot of little tests
    out there that tell which type of a learner you are, I think there
    are just as many different kinds of communicators.

    Two days ago I would have said that an example of a bad match between
    relationship type and communications channel was sexual and telephone.
    Then I found a FORUM magazine in the seatpocket on an airplane.
    It had about fifty ads for "Phone Sex".  Apparently it works for
    a lot of people, based on the number of ads.  I was sufficiently
    curious to explore how it worked, but I don't possess an appropriate
    credit card.  Probably just as well.  Anyway, I am a little stunned
    by how wrong I was about something that seemed so obvious.
      
    

    I believe that the telephone can be the worst way to communicate,
    especially when having problems in a relationship.  The telephone
    offers immediacy without intimacy.  You don't get a chance to proofread
    or make corrections.  Letter writing offers the oppotunity to be
    more precise in meaning and sentiment, and tends to keep overreaction
    to a minimum.  You can't hang up on a letter.
    
    Face-to-face communication also has advantages over the telephone.
    There are more options for expression -- facial, body english (spanish ..)
    come into play as much as voice.
    
    Communication over the tube hasn't quite matured, so it's difficult
    for me to say where it fits.  There are some accepted idioms :-)
    but there doesn't seem to be the set necessary for me to feel very
    comfortable with it.
    
    Dave

	Yeah, i am quite surprised to find how popular this sort of 
	activity is.  A couple of weeks ago, i was glancing through
	a local L.A. tabloid and was amazed to see how many ads were
	listed for were for phone sex.  Apparently, this must be a 
	popular pastime, at least in the Los Angeles area.  I guess it
	could fall under the category of safe sex, but not my cup of
	tea.

				-jim-

    
    Having been brought up with a modicum of telephone etiquette, I
    usually try to be polite and patient when calling someone.  However,
    I have found that I have little tolerance when I am on the receiving
    end of a phone call from some stranger trying to sell me insurance
    or storm windows, or whatever.  Worse yet, when it's some automatically
    dialed computer messages telling me to answer with my age, etc.
    at the sound of the beep.
    
    For the computers there is no point in waiting to give a rude response,
    but I sometimes cut a person off in midspeal to tell them that I
    am not interested, and then hang up.  I know these people are just
    trying to do a job, but I do not feel that just because I've got
    a telephone number in the book is any reason for them to nail one
    of my feet to the floor.
    
    Another form of phone abuse is to make annoyance calls in the middle
    of the night.  This differs from the heavy breathing obscene calls,
    in that once they've roused you out of bed at 4:00 a.m., they've
    gotten their revenge or whatever.
    
    These two problems come to my mind together because since cutting
    somebody's phone-pitch off a couple of weeks ago, we have gotten
    four of the latter type of call.  As a defense we have had to put
    the answering machine on with the sound turned off.  I can't help
    but wonder if the two are related.  Am I paranoid, or do you think
    some of these people are sufficiently frustrated at being in such
    a dead-end job that they take it out on those who rebuff them?
    

    Ref .6  On phone abuse
    
    It seems to me that the problem of other people controlling when
    they talk to me is worse with every technology-based communication
    medium.  Certainly people demanding my immediate attention by making
    my phone ring is aggravating, but I get more hassled to discover
    35 unread messages in my inbox every morning.  Especially when
    most of the stuff is not stuff I would have asked to recieve. In
    either case, someone else has control over what I see/hear, and
    I want that control back.
    
    I think the same issue can develop on an interpersonal level.  It
    is much easier to tell me to "buzz off" in a way that will stick
    if we are eyeball-to-eyeball than via a mail or phone message.
    (not that you would *EVER* want to do that)   Technology based
    communications mediums are probably more effective for the
    communication of facts and less effective for communication of feelings.

    	It so happens that my answering machine fields most of the
    calls I get from the "electronic time-sharing salesmen" or whatever.
    I'm never home for them.  I actually got one at my DTN one day!
    I hang up immediately when I do happen to get them.
    
    	Humans trying to sell me stuff through my phone get a polite
    "I'm not interested" and disconnected.  I refuse all advertising
    material handed out outside T stations as a matter of course.  I
    stare down people looking for money on the streets.  (Charities
    *sometimes* excluded)  I refuse to be swayed by Vax MAIL telling
    me what a wonderful thing it is to donate money to the United Way.
    (I considered sending a nastygram to the person who kept sending
    them to me and asking to be removed from the dist list, but they
    stopped before I got sufficiently riled...).  I do not even open
    "Publisher's Clearing House" or "Exciting Contest - You may have
    *WON* ***The State of Maine***" time-sharing offers addressed to
    my non-existent wife.
    
    	I'm about ready to tell my college alumni office to stuff it!
    
    
    	Communication abuse runs rampant in America...

    
>    	Communication abuse runs rampant in America...

So true.  It struck me a while back how a _conceptually_ simple enhancement
to the phone system would help to eliminate a lot of phone abuse.  Imagine
this: your phone has an LCD window on it that displays the number which
called you on any incoming phone call.  The number is displayed as soon as
the phone starts ringing, so you can even decide whether or not to answer
it.  This eliminates the present inequality in phone calls where the caller
knows who he is calling, but the callee does not unless the caller chooses
to honestly identify himself.

The problem of harassing and abusive calls would be greatly reduced
since offenders could be much more readily identified.  As for junk
calls, it would at least be a lot easier to ignore them.

The technology exists to do this.  Consider: anytime you make a toll
call, even to the next town, the phone system remembers your number
and the called number at least until your next phone bill.  The signaling
required to transmit a phone number can be done in a number of ways,
and phones could easily be made which would recognize and receive a
stream of digits and display them on an LCD window.

More pertinent to the comment a couple replies ago: a friend of mine told
me of what he thought to be a similar situation a while back.  Out of
annoyance, he was really nasty to some phone canvasser, and he got a number
of harassing phone calls for a while after that.  It's surprising, but it
may well happen.  There are actual people on the other end of those calls
(excluding of course the computerized calls), and I can't really blame them
for the fact that their job creates a confrontational situation. They
probably need the work.  Tempting though it may be to do otherwise,
it's probably best just to hang up quickly and quietly.

Dan

    
    Re: Mail and Phone Abuse
    
    	There is an address that you can ask to remove you name from
    mailing and phone lists.  I do it every year and it seems to keep
    the junk to a minimum.  Be sure to include your address, phone number
    and the names of all the people in residence.  The address is:
    
    	Direct Marketing Associates
    	6 East 43rd St
    	New York, NY 10017
    
    	You can also request each of your credit card companies not
    to sell your name to J Random Advertising Company.  They make lots
    of money selling names.  Be careful what you fill out.  I never give
    my phone number on warranty registrations.
    
    	I do not like junk mail but I can always just throw it out.
     I find random phone calls from investment companies, charities,
    ect as an invasion of my privacy.  I think random recorded calls
    are a crime and should be outlawed.  I have written many letters
    to my representatives about it.  Remember to get mad at the right
    person.  It does no good to pop off at the salesman or the person
    taking the survey.  They are just trying to do their job.  Complain
    often and loudly to the head of the company.
    
    	I find phone calls late at night very disturbing.  My solution
    is not to answer the phone after midnight as long as my wife is
    home.  What ever it is can wait until morning.
    
    						=Ralph=

    I've probably gotten more than my share of obscene, threatening,
    and harrassing phone calls - very disturbing to get several calls
    in a row late one night recently from someone threatening to kill me!  I
    finally gave up and disconnected the phone with the bell, leaving
    just the answering machine to field subsequent calls, so now we
    have a cassette tape full of the threatening caller, for evidence
    for the police if anything should happen.  I do not like to not
    answer my phone if I am home, no matter what time of day or night
    it is.  I got into that habit during the long months when my father
    was dying of cancer.   I wish that my phone would display the caller's
    number, or better yet, how about a programmable answering machine
    so that "junk" calls don't ring the phone (let 'em talk to the tape
    recorder...), and so I know who the callers are.   That would probably
    put a stop to the various sorts of harrassing calls (I've used several
    techniques to get rid of the obscene ones, but they honestly don't
    bother me as much as the threats, unless they call when I am asleep).
    The theory that the phone is there for MY convenience, not other
    people's, doesn't completely hold up if I know that I might miss
    something important by deciding that it is inconvenient for me to
    answer the fool thing. 
    
    I don't mind telephone solicitations too much: I am not usually
    home, and on the rare nights when I am I often get several.  I try
    to get rid of those folks as quickly as I can while still being
    polite: the people calling need the job, and I don't have to be
    nasty to them just because I am not interested.  I've NEVER gotten
    a computerized call.  Maybe the tape recorder has; it is often filled
    with a succession of dial tones when I get home.
    

Yes, I too get really annoyed when my precious week-night time-at-home
is invaded by an insurance salesperson phone call, or a magazine
subscription sales call.

What's even more annoying is when they keep trying to convince me
after I say "no thankyou".

I've had a great fantasy about how to handle one of those calls in
a more fun way than merely hanging up.  Being male, the fantasy is
that the annoying phone call has a female at the other end.  It goes like
this:

me:	Hello?
other:	Good evening, is this Mr. Osborn ?
me:	(annoyed already) I'm Mr. OSMAN, may I help you ?
other:	Good evening, Mr. OSMAN, you don't know me, but I've got some
	very good news for you.  Time-Life Books is pleased to . . .
me:	Excuse me, what's your name ?
other:	Uh, oh, Maryanne.  As I was saying, Time-Life books would like
	to
me:	Maryanne ?
other:	Yes ?
me:	Maryanne, you have a really nice voice on the telephone.  What
	I would just love to do is slide up your blouse and suck on
	your left breast.  Would you like that ?

This last line of course is to be delivered quite SLOWLY (so she doesn't
say "what?", gently, soothingly,
with the sound of genuine invitation.  Whatever her response, it's
bound to be more interesting than the normal sales call!
For full impact, I think it's important that the first name be obtained
and then uttered in the invitation.

/Eric

    
      Answering machines are beautiful.   8^)

    Os, I know you wouldn't REALLY do that (would you??). :-)
    
    Answering machines can be circumvented, too, sad to say.  My brother
    and I have both had answering machines for a couple of years now,
    having purchased them to make sure we always had a way to get telephone
    messages from the rest of the family (since everyone lives in different
    states) while our father was undergoing (unsuccessfully, as it turned
    out, sniff) cancer treatment.  (That way, you are pretty much
    gauaranteed to eventually get that dreaded message when you return
    home from work "Honey, this is mother.  Please call me at home as
    soon as you return. (sounds of sobbing) >click<)
    
    The things turned out to be generally useful enough that we both
    have kept them.  Now, my brother at one time worked for the ACLU
    (in fact, that was almost two years ago, and he has been unable
    to find a job since then, since he is blind, but that is another
    story).  As a liberal organization, they are not a good place to
    work for if you live in Des Moines, Iowa, as he does.  Now, we were
    both born in Iowa (in Ames), and I don't mean to put down the state
    or its people, but Des Moines seems to be populated with a large
    percentage of people who do NOT like the ACLU or its ideas.  They
    sufficiently harrassed my brother and others who worked in that
    office that he eventually could not take it and quit (also, his
    landlord was getting harrassing calls for harboring my "undesireable"
    brother and was making noises at him about moving, which he could
    not afford).  Recently, some of the right-wing Christian groups
    which were doing most of the harrassing starting calling and filling
    Ed's tapes with "inspirational" messages (usually "All you liberals
    are going to BURN BURN BURN!"), filling the entire 90 minute tape
    with this rubbish and causing the machine to rewind and overwrite
    legitimate messages on the beginning of the tape, such as calls
    from potential employers.  (Now, these uncaring people do not realize
    that Ed has not worked for ANYONE since they drove him out of the
    ACLU job, but they still have his phone number.  They probably do
    not care a whole lot that they caused a blind person who was starting
    to make it on his own to become a burden on society, since he was
    (is) a "liberal".....)                           Eventually he got
    the police involved, and some of the phone harrassers were arrested
    (I do not think they were prosecuted yet).       
    
    So, the tape recorder is not a perfect answer, either.  Sigh.

    Re .15:
        This isn't ANSWERING_MACHINE.NOTE, but...  modern answering
    machines are quite a bit smarter than older ones.  Mine, for instance,
    limits messages to one or four minutes (my choice), and at one minute,
    that's a LOT of calls to fill a tape.  Furthermore, when the tape
    is full, it stops answering.  Some machines will switch to an
    alternate announcement ("Please call back later") when the tape
    is full.
    
        I am a firm believer in answering machines to insulate one from
    pesky people who feel that knowing my phone number (or even worse,
    those who simply dial all numbers in an exchange in sequence) is
    an invitation to invade my privacy.

    					Steve

    
    
    
    Reading .15 makes me feel very un_liberal, in fact it makes me want
    to KILL.
    
    
    
    
    
    

    I agree!  But I try to restrain impulses like that...
    
    My brother's machine DOES limit messages, to fifty seconds.  It
    is sort of a nuisance that it does so since it means that I have
    to call it several times if I need to leave him a lengthy or
    complicated bunch of information.  In order to fill up his 90 minute
    tapes, the harrassing callers were calling OVER AND OVER AGAIN!