A couple of weeks ago, in this very space, I examined the commonly-held notion that technology is a panacea for all our communication woes, narrowing the gap between face-to-face conversation and long-distance exchange and thereby increasing the intimacy of everyday communication. I determined, in typical social science fashion, that technology can both improve communication and worsen it.

One the one hand, communication over a distance is made ever more like talking face-to-face; on the other hand, technology is now used more often to increase the efficiency rather than the intimacy. Essentially, you’re giving Mercury some turbo-powered wings for his feet, but then you’re bashing his kneecaps with a tire iron.

Then I threw in some stuff about The Facebook so that someone would actually read the column. Today, instead of pop culture references, I have — to use a nominalization that would make any prescriptive linguist cringe — a graphic.

Below, you will find the Hierarchy of Communication, a list of various forms of communication listed in a convenient low-to-high-involvement format. “Involvement” is the amount of personal involvement intrinsic to the medium — to put it another way, the likelihood that any given mode of communication will make a person feel smothered and/or uncomfortable.

In general, the involvement level depends on two factors: how quickly the message gets to the recipient (i.e. how instantaneous the medium is), and the proportion of the sender’s resources (cognitive, physical, temporal and/or monetary) that are used in creating and sending the message.

I combined these factors in a complex algorithm known as “shuffling little bits of paper around until it looked right.” As a fail-safe, I used a second slightly more complex algorithm, “getting my roommate to shuffle little bits of paper around until it looked right.”

You’ll notice that having a face-to-face conversation — the earliest form of communication — is in the precise middle of the scale, with lower- and higher-involvement modes on either side. You’ll also notice that newer innovations tend to the lower-involvement side, while older innovations tend to be higher-involvement. What does that say about technology? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

(click to see a larger version)