Texting vs Talking

Was reading an article recently about dialog communications and how texting has replaced talking in a lot of modern communication. (http://alistapart.com/article/conversational-design)

It had an interesting diagram that displayed a time line of human communication going back to the dawn of civilization. Electronic communication was just the most recent and tiniest sliver, less than 100 years in the past 1.75 million years. The largest segment of that was just speaking. Cave drawings and cuneiform did not arrive until the last 6000 years.

The article also talked about how traditional textual publication was literary, printed with great effort and cost for long term storage and, by extension, authority. Scripts and books were primary vehicles for knowledge. Technology has lowered the cost and barriers to entry for publication and raised the immediacy. Text technology has also replaced the need for physical presence and/or synchronization required by speaking. (Ignoring voice mail for now).

I agree that talking requires some coordinated attention that simple texting avoids. To talk to someone in the same room or to dial a phone number sets our expectations for a certain level of engagement, even eloquence. Texting, partly due to the awkwardness of phone keyboards, generally transfers only the simplest of thoughts, expressed in the least amount of characters possible, sometimes enhanced (or miscommunicated) with pre-drawn emoje’s.

It’s not clear if human communication is degenerating to simpler thoughts, like plastic degenerating into microfibers in the ocean, or if tools like instant messaging apps are robbing us of the need to conjure up and articulate complex thoughts. Were we wasting our precious neural activities on excess communication or are we just dumber and lazier now?