Have we lost the art of inference?

This past weekend I came across a newspaper article that struck a cord.  The article was based on the ever popular phenomenon that is Twitter and that, here in the UK the habit of micro-blogging is making us wittier as a nation.  Are we becoming wittier or just better at expressing ourselves in 140 characters?

The art of communication has changed radically over the years and there is an abundance of articles out there talking about the effect of social networking, blogging, texting etc however it seems to me that this obsession with 'text based communication' is having the exact opposite effect on people than was intended.

We are becoming increasingly reliant on this one dimensional form of conversing which I find difficult to describe as communication.  Communication is about more than what we actually read, as humans we communicate on many levels and make assumptions about tone of voice, intonation, even accent.
This phenomenon of conversing via text, whether using a text message or micro-blogging, is creating a generation of children that have difficulty understanding these subtle changes in tone and intonation, therefore requiring everything to be quite literal rather than being able to naturally infer a meaning from speech, to go beyond what is actually stated.

Instead of the sponteniety of conversation, where by we as humans are picking up not only on what is being said but all the signals that are expressed using tone, intonation, body language etc we are now only viewing communication in a single dimension which is not the innovation we originally perceived.

Here at HulloMail we understand the need for quick communication and respect the place that text messaging, micro-blogging and social networking have within the hearts of users however we believe it is limiting without the use of voice.
The Hullo feature, currently available on the iPhone and BlackBerry, has been designed so that users can   use the speed of a delivery of a text but with the ease of recording your message.  In addition to the speed you also have the benefit of being able to hear the tone of someone's voice and infer additional meaning to that...  I'm sure we have all had a text, an email or a tweet that even though we have read and understood we have inferred a tone that wasn't there,  send a Hullo next time!

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