Communicating Virtually Part 1

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY,
Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Harvard Business Review Press

Boston, Massachusetts

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts

Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts
when purchased in bulk for client gifts, sales promotions, and premiums. Special edi-
tions, including books with corporate logos, customized covers, and letters from the
company or CEO printed in the front matter, as well as excerpts of existing books, can
also be created in large quantities for special needs.

For details and discount information for both print and
ebook formats, contact [email protected],

tel. 800-988-0886, or www.hbr.org/bulksales.

Copyright 2018 Nicholas H. Morgan

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for
permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions,
Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book’s
publication but may be subject to change.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Morgan, Nick, author.
Title: Can you hear me? : how to connect with people in a virtual world /

Nick Morgan.
Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2018] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037883 | ISBN 9781633694446 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Communication and technology. | Business communication. |

Teleconferencing. | Communication—Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC P96.T42 M665 2018 | DDC 302.23/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037883

ISBN: 978-1-63369-444-6
eISBN: 978-1-63369-445-3

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.hbr.org/bulksales

mailto:[email protected]

https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037883

http://www.hbr.org

To Nikki, the center of my world

To Sarah, Eric, Howard, and Emma, bridging old worlds

and new

To Lakin, Logan, Eryn, Thaila, and Cyril, knowing only

the new

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

CoNTENTS

Prologue: Is This Thing On? ix

Introduction 1

We’re More Connected Than Ever, So Why Do I Feel So Alone?

PART ONE

THE FIVE BASIC PRoBLEMS WITH VIRTUAL COMMUNICATIONS

1. The Lack of Feedback 27

Where’s the emotional clarity?

2. The Lack of Empathy 43

Where’s the consistency?

3. The Lack of Control 65

For better or worse, your life online is public

4. The Lack of Emotion 85

Can you make me care?

5. The Lack of Connection and Commitment 105

Anyone here from Dubuque?

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

viii Contents

PART TWO

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES FOR SPECIFIC DIGITAL CHANNELS

6. Email, Email Alternatives, and Texting 127

7. The Conference Call 149

8. The Webinar 167

9. The Chat Session 191

10. Sales 213

Conclusion 233

Notes 247

Index 255

Acknowledgments 267

About the Author 269

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

PROLOGUE
IS THIS THINg ON?

We are all unwitting participants in a massive social experiment
that began slowly after World War II and gathered speed in the
last decade with the introduction of the smartphone. We have
created virtual personas, online worlds, digital connections,
social media lives, email relationships, audioconference teams—
the whole panoply of ways that we now communicate with one
another virtually.

That ability to communicate virtually seemed at first to be
an unmitigated advance. We could communicate faster, more
easily, with less friction, at our own convenience, to multiples
of our previous audiences, with the click of a mouse or a “send”
button.

Only recently have we started to realize that this huge social
experiment has a downside, too. We’ve started to worry about
shorter attention spans, and we wonder if the internet makes
us stupid. But the real downside has remained largely invisible
to us because it touches on the workings of our unconscious
minds.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

x Prologue

As we’ve made room for virtual communication in our lives,
our workplaces, and in all the ways we connect with one another,
we haven’t fully realized how emotionally empty virtual com-
munications are. Every form of virtual communication strips
out the emotional subtext of our communications to a greater or
lesser extent. Every one.

Take email, for example. We’ve all experienced the frus-
tration of sending an email that was (to us) obviously meant
to be a joke. But the recipient, instead of being amused, was
offended, and we had to spend huge amounts of time repair-
ing the relationship. That’s the simplest, most obvious form
of emotional undercutting that virtual communications foist
on us.

Most of us have also spent hours on audioconferences at work,
with the mute button in force, taking care of other business
while people on the other end of the box drone on endlessly.
We’ve had to lunge for that mute button when the boss suddenly
says, “Nick, are you still on? What do you think of the new
cross-eyed widget?”

And then there’s social media, which would seem to be all
about emotional connection but in fact is like Pringles potato
chips; you need to keep eating them because one chip doesn’t
satisfy. The bland taste creates a need for more but doesn’t
allow you to stop. We get one like on Facebook, enjoy a brief
hit of pleasure, and crave more. We get social love on Twit-
ter and Instagram, and it’s just enough to keep us checking
our mobile phones hundreds of times per day. In short, we’ve
transferred a surprisingly large amount of our human inter-
actions to the virtual world, and as a result, we no longer get
the emotional information, support, and reinforcement we
used to get without thinking about it while communicating
face-to-face.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Virtual relationships are more fragile and easily disrupted
because they lack the unconscious connections our face-to-face
interactions automatically convey. The lift of an eyebrow, the
tone of a voice, a quick smile, a shake of the head—these are the
ways we decode other people’s intents. These signals are largely
absent from all forms of digital communication.

In business, this absence leads to miscommunication, mis-
understandings, and a huge amount of do-overs, workarounds,
and relationship repair. It’s expensive. It’s inefficient. And the
cost in fractured relationships, missed opportunities, and lost
connections is incalculable. Because we make decisions with our
emotions, moreover, when we take them out of the communi-
cation, the audioconference, or the webinar, it becomes almost
impossible to make good decisions when we’re immersed in the
virtual stream.

In our personal lives, the same problems occur, especially
when we’re trying to connect with someone at a distance, virtu-
ally. It’s expensive in many less quantifiable ways.

The result of this massive social experiment is a huge increase
in loneliness, social isolation, fear of missing out (FOMO), and
Instagram/Facebook envy, and, tragically, teenage depression
and even suicide. We may be raising a generation of people who
are unhappy communicating virtually and incompetent com-
municating face-to-face. Those of us with one foot in the face-
to-face world and one foot in the virtual world are torn. We are
invested in both, but we lack the time to master either world or
feel completely at home in both.

What’s to be done? The experiment will continue. We can’t
live without our gadgets. Too much of our personal and work
lives today relies on the virtual. Indeed, most organizations with
an international reach couldn’t function without the digital
means of communication they use every day.

Prologue xi

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

xii Prologue

But we need to learn to live smarter and communicate
differently to survive in this brave new digital world. We need
to begin to consciously add the emotional subtext back into
our virtual communications to avoid the costs—personal and
financial—associated with miscommunication.

That’s the subject of this book.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

INTRODUCTION
WE’RE MORE CoNNECTED THAN EVER,
So WHY DO I FEEL SO ALONE?

“It’s state of the art.” I was being ushered into half a conference
room in Boston. The other half was in Denmark, at another
branch office of the company I was consulting with. My assign-
ment was to coach a half-dozen executives preparing for an
important meeting at which they would all be speaking. These
executives were spread around the world, some in the United
States, some in Europe, and some in Asia.

This day, I was coaching one executive. She wouldn’t be back
in the United States for a week or two, and it was important that
she start rehearsing sooner than that. The solution was to put
her in one-half of a conference room that showed up virtually in
the US office where I was seated.

“It’s as good as being in the same room,” was the considered
opinion of her administrative assistant, who was leading me into
the windowless room that promised to deliver Denmark to me.
“It’s state of the art.”

I sat down, as instructed, in a chair in front of a curved table
that looked like part of an expensive business school auditorium.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

2 Can You Hear Me?

In front of me, instead of a stage and lectern, was a screen. On
the screen was the mirror image of the room I was in—the same
curved table, with chairs, and microphones in front of each chair.

It was like looking into a huge mirror. Only the half of the
room inside the mirror was empty.

I glanced around the room and waited. The assistant whis-
pered a few instructions. “Speak into the microphone. It’s voice
activated. Tap it. Don’t stand up. And you don’t have to shout.”

I wondered why she had told me not to stand. She left. In a
minute or two, in walked the torso of what I presumed was my
executive.

Her head was cut off. I learned later that “state of the art”
only allowed for a picture that covered people sitting in chairs.
People of average height. Very tall people had to slump slightly
in their chairs.

When she sat down, I could see her face.
“— you?” she said.
After a moment’s confusion, I realized that she must have

asked me how I was. The voice-activated microphone had cut
off the first words of her response.

I tapped the microphone and said, “(tap) I’m fine, thanks.
How are you?”

The coaching conversation proceeded in a strange series of
percussive sounds and overlapping comments. By the end of the
session, we were shouting at each other. I wasn’t sure why. We
could see each other well enough unless we stood up. We could
hear each other, as long as we kept tapping the mic before speak-
ing. Why did it feel like such hard work, and why did we end up
shouting at each other? Why was an hour or two all we could
sustain? What was so hard about something that looked almost
like we were in the same room? (I’ll answer those immediate
questions at the end of this introduction and take up a more

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Introduction 3

in-depth discussion of the problems and opportunities of video-
conferencing in chapter 9.)

For most people, moving into the digital world to communicate
means experiencing significant loss of clarity, ease, and depth. You
struggle to convey the lightness of tone you want in an email, and
you risk offending your colleague because the smile doesn’t come
through. You tune out during an audioconference because some
connection is missing and you can’t stay focused virtually for ninety
minutes. You flounder to find the right sense of engagement on a
Skype call. It’s a job interview, but the interviewer is calling in from
her home office (as you are), and how does that change the dynam-
ics of the interview? Are you at home or at work? Is the right tone
more or less open, more or less formal, more or less sincere?

You can’t find good emotional footing
in the virtual world today

Over and over again, people find that they struggle when try-
ing to communicate virtually. Something—a lot—is missing. It’s
harder to get the nuances, the emotions, and the details right.
Does that mean that the digital world makes us stupider? Less
able to concentrate? Less desirous of an emotional connection?

No, but it demands that we learn to behave differently. We
need to learn a new set of rules—like learning to communicate
in a new language. The virtual pushes us to invest in multiple
different worlds, often simultaneously. These new worlds come
with new, vague codes of conduct and create new needs. A lot of
work we used to take for granted, because it was done automat-
ically by our unconscious minds in face-to-face communications,
now has to be done consciously and intentionally. The digital
world forces us to rewire our unconscious communication habits
for conscious success.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

4 Can You Hear Me?

And clearly, we urgently need to learn to avoid the traps of the
digital world and its new forms of communications. For exam-
ple, psychologists have identified a new phobia: nomophobia, the
fear of trying to live without your cell phone.1 And yet, much
research shows that as our digital engagement goes up, our per-
sonal sense of loneliness increases just as fast.2 Why this perverse
attachment to tools that are actually increasing our sense of
detachment? We develop Facebook FOMO, Twitter envy, and
LinkedIn loss. And we respond by diving more deeply into the
very digital means of our discontent. The virtual water we drink
simply makes us thirstier.

We’re more connected than ever, and more alone

We need help.
In-person communication is incredibly rich, loaded with

information about how the person we’re talking to is feeling at
every second of the conversation. It’s satisfying in a way that vir-
tual communication can’t be. Virtual communication is much
flatter—online conversation requires us to deliberately engage
our own and other people’s emotions.

We need a new rule book for conscious communication in
the digital age. Our unconscious minds fail us at the doorway
to the digital world. We have to learn how to put as much of the
missing emotion, pattern recognition, and memory back into the
digital world that those well-intentioned engineers have stripped
out.

That’s what the book you’re holding in your hands (or read-
ing on a Kindle, or listening to with earbuds, or having directly
implanted into your brain by some technology waiting to be
invented) will show you how to do. This book offers a Fodor’s
guide for the unknown digital country we find ourselves in,

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Introduction 5

because how can we leave it? We need the digital realm, and yet
the cost of living in it is far too high, psychologically speaking.

The opportunity cost of free, fast
information is surprisingly high

Now you know the grim truth about this brave new digital
world. What specific problems does it raise for us inhabitants
of the world of work—those of us who have to get stuff done?
And what can we do to make things better? The rest of this
chapter will sketch out the main ideas this book covers on the
digital-communications conundrum.

Sadly, the more we learn, the worse this world we’ve created
looks. Study after study documents the impoverishing effect of
life in the digital era: the absurd collation of unlimited data,
supercomputers in our pockets, and endlessly trite, recycled, bite-
sized information fed to us in ways that make sense for machines
to broadcast but not for humans to receive.3

And even worse, although we can’t easily see how the digital
world makes some work harder, the difficulty is no less crip-
pling. Let’s take a quick tour of the research on what happens to
good communicators in the virtual world.

With email, recipients are less cooperative—and feel more
justified in not cooperating.4 They feel more entitled to lie.5
They evaluate each other more harshly because of reduced
feelings of social obligation.6 It turns out, for example, that
if you have even a brief conversation over the phone before
trying to negotiate via email, it goes better.7 Or, if you use a
webcam to make eye contact with someone you’re about to
debate with, the conversation goes better, with less hostility.8
Eye contact enables us to determine, in the long run, who’s
dominant and, in the short run, who’s talking.9 In general,

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

6 Can You Hear Me?

workplaces that make an effort to put back in the workplace
some of the absent human emotions—the emotions so eas-
ily conveyed in face-to-face conversations, the “I care” kind
of feelings—reduce absenteeism and burnout and increase
employee engagement.10

Virtual communication sabotages
us in unexpected ways

People who use social words in their communications, words
like coffee or football, are less likely to get fired.11

By now, you won’t be surprised to learn that no one except
you pays attention on conference calls.12 Of course you do. Those
hilarious anecdotes you’ve heard about people doing silly, ran-
dom, and disgusting things while muted on a conference call?
They’re doing those things because they’re completely disen-
gaged from that important call you scheduled for Monday
morning to kick the week off right at each of your crucial centers
around the globe.

True confession: I started casting—if that’s the right word—
tarot cards while on innumerable conference calls. And I’m not
a believer. Just to pass the time. Until I discovered pacing and
lifting free weights. Now I’m trying to get in shape while half-
listening to all those calls.

Strangely, doodling helps you pay attention.13 Maybe that’s
because doodling engages your unconscious mind.

Maybe you should doodle while texting. Researchers recently
found that the more you rely on texting to sustain your roman-
tic relationships, the less satisfying those relationships are.14 But
don’t be texting while in a meeting—three-quarters of your
coworkers find it annoying, no matter how cleverly you try to
disguise what you’re doing.15 We can tell.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Introduction 7

Of course, people think they communicate more clearly over
email than they actually do.16 Tone is very hard to communicate;
there’s emotion rearing its pesky head again. As John Medina,
a molecular biologist with a PhD and the author of Brain Rules,
notes, we don’t pay attention to boring things. Vision trumps the
other senses. But even video calls are sensory-poor experiences
compared with face-to-face encounters, because of the air pres-
sure, the smells, the ambient sound in the room. All the sensory
input of all five senses and a few more that we’re only just begin-
ning to learn about are condensed or eliminated on video.17

We were meant to communicate face-
to-face, outdoors, in constant motion

As Medina says, “the human brain appears to have been
designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor
setting, in unstable meteorological conditions, and to do so in
near-constant motion.” That’s what fully engages our senses and
our unconscious minds. None of those conditions are usually
present or optimal in the digital world. And, he continues, peo-
ple “ought to really understand that the brain processes meaning
before it processes detail. It wants the meaning of what it is that
you’re talking about before it wants the detail of what it is you’re
talking about.”18 In other words, we want to know why first and
then how or what.

According to neuroscientists, when the brain encounters
something new, which is a good deal of our waking life, it starts
to ask questions. It immediately queries the inputs it receives
from the outside world with six essential concerns—all to do,
not surprisingly, with survival. Will it eat me? Can I eat it?
Can I have sex with it? Can it have sex with me? Have I seen it
before? Have I never seen it before? Can you imagine how the

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

8 Can You Hear Me?

third-quarter financial numbers compete on a conference call
with those other questions running around subconsciously in
the participants’ minds?

Finally, the unconscious mind craves the big picture—the
sort of overview you might have gotten in caveperson days from
an outcropping a hundred yards above the savanna—and, at the
same time, refuge. The safety of the cave. The virtual world, by
putting us into our heads, gives us neither overview nor refuge.19

Virtual communication engenders five big
problems seldom encountered in person

The first big problem with virtual communication is the lack
of feedback. This is the problem from which all the rest of the
problems in the virtual world flow. Humans (in an evolutionary
sense) are relatively feeble creatures. We run the risk of falling
victim to lots of bigger animals with paws and teeth that can
reduce us to dinner with a swipe or a bite. So, we evolved to be
prediction junkies and became adept at scouting out patterns.
We want to know, always, what’s going to happen next, and we
want to know, does that shadow mean a tiger is lurking over
there?

Our brains constantly scan the spaces around us, looking
for danger patterns and making predictions. We use the
five senses that we’re aware of, and others that only our
unconscious minds keep track of, like sensing the way the
air changes around us when other humans or animals are
drawing near.

The virtual world usually deprives us of most of those sources
of sensory information. We simply don’t get the feedback we’re
used to getting constantly and analyzing continuously. Our
brains respond by filling up the sensory data with memories,

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

Introduction 9

made-up stuff, and anxiety. And thus we find the virtual world
repetitive, confusing, and tension-filled. We suffer in the virtual
world primarily because of the lack of sensory feedback.

The second big problem is related to the first: the lack of
empathy. Because we get little information in virtual commu-
nication, we learn little about how other people are feeling. The
mirror neurons that normally send us constant data about other
people’s emotions are deprived of the sensory feed, and so they
once again make it up. You start to imagine that the person on
the other end of that email is angry at you, because you don’t
really know what the person is thinking.

This lack of information, and the resulting misinformation
filling the pipeline, lead us to poor or incorrect analyses of other
people’s emotional states. Our normal high levels of empathy are
reduced or rendered inaccurate.

A side issue of the lack of empathy is that the virtual world
is less interesting, since a big part of what engages our time and
attention in the real world is figuring out what other people are
feeling. And so, in the virtual world, attention spans are shorter,
maybe as short as ten minutes.20 But habit dictates that meetings
are usually scheduled in hour-long segments, some even longer.
Our meetings, especially virtual ones, are outstripping our atten-
tion spans.

The third big problem is the lack of control over your own
persona. This problem develops in the virtual emotional des-
ert. Because the virtual world is arranged largely by and for
machines, it can remember everything. This capacity means that
you leave endless digital footprints everywhere you go. In the
real world, people forget and forgive. In the virtual world, as
many job applicants have found, all those embarrassing photos
from your wild college parties are still out there, ripe for the
harvesting.

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio
University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

10 Can You Hear Me?

As we’ll see, you can manage your virtual persona to a certain
extent, but on the whole, it’s as if every step you ever took were
memorialized in wet cement as you ventured forth. The virtual
world is the wet cement for every digital step you take.

The fourth big problem is the lack of emotion. The human
mind is constantly assessing its surroundings and the intent of
all the people within its ken. Take away the emotional subtext,
and an odd thing happens: we …