Last week I found myself in a very engaging discussion over at Shonali Burke’s blog on the challenges of authenticity on the social web. The post was a guest post by Erica Holt, who posed the question of whether it’s possible to truly be yourself online.

The discussion in the comments got into dissecting what exactly it means to be “authentic” or “transparent” on the web, and why some people find it much easier to be their true selves online than others. (If you’d like to chime in, I highly recommend going over to Shonali’s and reading both Erica’s post and our discussion in the comments.)

Erica brings up many points in her post, but there was one line in particular that resonated with me:

“. . . when miscommunication occurs, this can be dangerous.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year or so.

Again and again, we celebrate all the good that comes out of this new media we call “social” — the connections we’ve made, the business we’ve acquired, the friendships we would have otherwise not found, or the friendships we’ve rekindled. We have frequent “tweetups,” applaud one another for the accomplishments and connections we’ve made, and even hold myriad conferences in the name of these tools and technologies that we hold so dear to our hearts. Our love for our real-time communication and rapidly-advancing technology is evident in everything we do, but seldom do we talk about how dangerous our dependency can be.

Social media can indeed create many ties that bind; but how often do we talk about how our dependency can break those ties, and sometimes open up old wounds?

I think it happens a lot more than we’d like to admit.

Miscommunication has always happened by relying on medium. We’ve all heard stories of the letter that got lost in the mail from a woman’s fallen soldier husband, only to be finally delivered decades later, tying up loose ends. If only she’d have gotten that letter sooner, when it was supposed to be delivered …

Of course, you know where I’m going with this. Many of us have had instances of misunderstanding because of an important email accidentally getting caught by the spam filter, or worse yet, never being delivered. Or perhaps being delivered way too late. (I recently received an email dated 2005 regarding my student loan consolidation!)

But it goes a step further, and this is what confuddles me: WHY do we not openly talk about those times when beloved tech fails us? Those times when text messages or emails get lost in space, which sometimes cause arguments, or at the very least, confusion? Are we so forgiving of Facebook always having glitches, that the fight that breaks out because of messages not received or returned is somehow just magically OK? Are we so forgiving of Twitter that DMs containing important information that are never received are somehow to be instantly dismissed?

Not long ago, I spent almost a week wondering why one of my best friends blocked me from seeing everything on her Facebook account. I couldn’t see her wall, her pictures, nothing. I was worried she was mad at me about something, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I did wrong, other than forget I was signed onto Facebook chat and didn’t respond to her quick “Hi, how are you?” IM that morning. I thought that was hardly a reason to be so mad at me that she’d block me. I wrote her a note on Facebook and didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t reply to my text messages, either. Finally I asked her husband what was up with her, and asked if I did anything wrong. Turns out, it wasn’t me at all — her account got hacked and she was having issues with her phone. All that worrying for nothing!

That’s a pretty mild incident, but the potential for much more severe instances is prominent. Our addiction to our technology can unite us, but our dependence can (and sometimes does) severely divide. What price do we put on that?

Is our dependence on our tech a prescription for inevitable social disaster?

In the fine print on most prescriptions, it says something like “Your doctor has prescribed this because s/he believes that the benefits far outweigh the risk of side effects.” At what point do realize that the benefits of our tech DON’T outweigh the risk of the cost? Then what?

Back before the internet (for those of us who can remember) it was usually pretty easy to tell when someone gives us the “cold shoulder.” Unfortunately, the “cold, new media shoulder” is often misinterpreted.

Do we assume that someone with whom we THOUGHT we were very good friends never wants to speak to us for some reason, or do we ask them for an explanation? And how?

Every semester, at the beginning of every communications course he taught, one of my favorite professors in undergrad always started out by stating,

“Even by not communicating, you’re communicating.”

… and that’s the cold hard truth.

Communication, in its simplest definition, is the delivery of ideas and/or messages. Think of the speculation that abounds in courtrooms (real or movies) when someone is declared guilty of murder and their reaction is stoicism. (“They have no remorse! They have no soul! Monster!” when in reality, said person could simply be in shock.)

What messages are you sending to people by not saying anything at all? Or, worse yet — what are you saying (or not saying) to people by depending on the medium (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) over face time?

I ask a lot of questions in this post and don’t really have any answers. But these are things I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’d love to hear your take.

Photo 1 by Search Engine People Blog, photo 2 by Thirteen of Clubs.