The Evolution of Urgency
"I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email." – Elon Musk
Human communication has evolved quite a bit since our earliest days as a species from smoke signals, horns, drums, and carrier pigeons. Although what hasn’t changed quite as much is face-to-face or in-person conversation – the simplest, most direct form of verbal or audible communication. However, as the need to reliably and consistently communicate with those not present or nearby increased, and as technology in general advanced, so did the methods and speed of communication. Over the past 4-5 millennia, we’ve gone from sending a piece of mail across town via couriers over a span of days, to trillions of text messages sent around the world in seconds. This evolution of speed and convenience in communication, coupled with mankind’s increased desire for instant gratification and fast response times, seems to have blurred the lines between what is truly urgent and what is not.
Perhaps the desire for faster response times in our interaction with others is a natural outgrowth of the increased speed of technology – as people’s expectations eventually adapt to faster performance patterns. It may also be due in some part to a cognitive bias referred to as hyperbolic discounting – where, for example, given two similar rewards people tend to prefer one that arrives sooner rather than later. Regardless, we now have technology that feeds this growing preference for urgency in communication – whether the preference is stated implicitly through the method (e.g., mobile calls, video calling, IM/texting), or explicitly through urgency indicators such as “ASAP”, “URGENT”, or importance icons/markers.
How exactly does the method of communication imply urgency? Conversations between people happen either synchronously or asynchronously. In synchronous communication, the exchange is real-time – or at least there’s an expectation of minimal or no delay in response. It’s an implicit request to immediately stop your current activities to engage in a communication exchange – for example, a phone call, a video chat request, etc. In an asynchronous dialogue, the implicit request isn’t so much for a real-time exchange as it is a request to engage in a communication exchange at the availability and convenience of the recipient – for example, emails. Here, the initiator of the exchange can resume other activities while awaiting a response – which, for many of the perpetually busy people like Elon Musk, may be the preferable way to communicate. Texting is somewhat of a hybrid between synchronous and asynchronous dialogue; unless it’s with your spouse or mother, then it’s synchronous.
Ultimately, urgency is an indication of relative importance and time – relative because what’s important to one person isn’t necessarily so for another. And therein lies the point. How we choose to communicate with one other has both inherent and allocated meanings and attributes, and one of those is urgency or level of importance – whether arising from a time-sensitive need, an emergency, or poor planning. The other is the most precious, non-renewable, finite resource available that some value more than others – time. No matter the method, initiating a dialogue with someone – whether face-to-face, via phone, email or text -- is a request of that person’s time and interrupts some activity or task. And despite the new cultural norm of instant gratification -- not every statement, question, or message is urgent enough to devote precious time for an immediate response.