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An Anthropological Approach Since the beginning of human adventure on earth, community life, symbolic, trade and emotional exchange, which represent most of human private and public life, has been ruled by verbal communication, by bringing two bodies, thus two voices, together into a common place : a physical but also linguistic and psychologic common space.
For thousands of years, each human being has known the voice of others he was talking to, since they were part of the samevillage, or community.In the 15th century, the invention of printing fundamentally changed the relationship between men : The "Gutenberg Galaxy" (Mac Luhan) was on.
Since that, supremacy of the written text over oral communication remained effective up to the end of the 20th century. It is important to remember the traditional depreciation of oral communication already proved by the famous Latin maxim :
"Verba volant, scripta manent". In brief the whole occidental civilization relied its phenomenal development in all knowledge domains to the "written thing", the "library treasury", the "delayed communication" provided by books. This universal supremacy of the "written matter" was obvious : a book may be carried to the other side of the world, may be read by people who ignore each other, even living in different times. For those reasons, books became a considerable way of capitalizing and transmitting the human knowledge.
This cultural anthropology may be going to its end with today's psychological and moral solitude in which the populations of world's most developed countries are entering. If the computer, cellular phone, fax, video-conferencing, printers and scanners keep increasing without limits the communication speed, it is important not to forget (as it has been continuously repeated for the last 20 years by the Palo Alto cognitive school), that the "real time" communication acceleration has negative counterparts in human relations. For two reasons : first the distant communication deprives the parties from their direct contact and therefore from any of the additional information provided by the "body language" and affects. And also because the bandwidth limitation (usually of telephones) distorts the human voice and removes most of its critical modulation, who deeply carries emotion, mood and feelings, as well as anything related to affects.
Obviously, affects are critically important for human relationship and behavior. They could be necessary for any decision based on faith or simply for a buying decision : the voice tone in the correspondent arguments is essential. In his subtle tone variations lies the power to convince, to seduce and to prove sincerity, as his tone may also reveal the lie and insincerity.
Internet may be accomplishing the third revolution in communication by transmitting the "written thing" in real time. However, this new communication vector must, during the coming years, improve its vocal qualities. Its sonic quality is today quite poor and unable to carry the emotional content of voice, making any human communication unrecognizable, more or less hostile. The ultimate goal of AudioNetworks is to improve the "Recognition Factor" of the voice in order to restore its emotional content. This goal represents a considerable stake both in anthropological and economical domain, probably critical for Internet communication future. If the goal is achieved, Internet communication could gain a considerable advantage for human relationship. Then, talking over the net could mean meeting with a recognized individual with which confidence may be created, a community feeling built and a real dialogue established.
Philippe Daros |
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