The Perils of Phones.

I had Vibber uploaded into my Iphone recently so my relatives in  the U.S.A can phone me and I can call them for free. I have also "facetime" and Skype. And I have "facebook" and internet connection via Iphone.

Then of course, the old reliable email adds to the connectivity to the outside world.

But the other day, one associate informed me that she was texting an important meeting which we didn't receive. The text was sent to a Nokia which we suspect had been acting strangely, meaning some texts are not being processed and received.

The sender was thinking we didn't care about the event, and we were thinking, she didn't call for a meeting.

In today's highly wired world, the technology which is expected to improve mass communication sometimes becomes the source of mis-communication.Why? Because we rely too much on it.

We think that if we email someone, s/he'd see it right away and respond. But we never think that sometimes emails go directly into a receiver's spam folder because of the filtering or privacy settings that s/he had inadvertently done to her/his program.

Or when we send an SMS to someone, we immediately think it's been sent successfully and received successfully. We do not see lag-issues, provider issues, and sometimes, "low-bat" or "no-load" issues. Some phones or providers do not process text messages when the receiver's phone has no pre-paid load, and the message is kept hanging somewhere.

Ourselves, we try to email and text at the same time for important issues and concerns we want known and taken up if we are expected to be the initiator of something.

And of course, a "live call," is always the best, because no load or with load, we can always reach someone.

I remember an old, 1984 phone commercial of AT & T, " Reach out and touch someone." Play it here.