Technological Barriers

Technological Barriers Interfering with Communication

In today’s organizations, technology is largely used to mediate communication. Gone are the days when doing even the easiest task required the hardest labour.

Now, with the proliferation of smart computers in organizations, we can perform any task at the click of a mouse, our dependence on technology is all the time high.

For example, technical glitches were the main reason that resulted in the 2009’s Common Admission Test (CAT) becoming a major problem—both for the aspirants as well as for those who conducted it.

It was reported in the media that across the country there were 2.41 million candidates who were to take the test initially, but over 20,000 candidates could not take their test due to technical glitches.

The reason given was that there were attacks by viruses like ‘Conflicer’ and ‘W32 Nimda’.

Though technology-based communication such as phone conversations, text messages and e-mails have made communication easy for us but on the flip side, it has reduced the possibility of natural face-to-face interaction that is at the helm of any human communication.

Without non-verbal cues such as eye contact Opens in new window, facial expressions Opens in new window, and body language Opens in new window, people are more likely to misunderstand messages, causing the quality of communication to suffer.

For example, a text message where all the words are in capital letters can be interpreted as an angry ‘yelling’ message, while the reality may be far from that.