Global Communication

 "Global communication is the process of transmitting and receiving information on a world-wide scale."” In the near future, global communication is going to become invaluable. Businesses and governments will devote whole divisions to this process. Communication has a great amount of interpretation involved with it, therefore, in order to be successful, businesses and governments will need to make sure they are saying what they want to mean. Global communication is going to become one of the most important things of our time.

There are many different communication forms that allow people to transfer ideas and feelings to one another. The internet has been bringing people together for years. People have been using the internet by entering chatrooms, setting up their own facebook page, hosting online business meetings, skyping, and sending electronic mail. In combination with the internet people have been brought closer together by telecommunications. Phones can receive calls, send text and picture messages, and now a phone can even access the web and all the communication forms which that offers. Oral communications and body language make up two more mediums of communication. With body language and facial cues, one person can tell what another person is feeling, sensing, and sometimes even thinking. This is possible because non-verbal communication makes up nearly 70% of all communication.

Interpretation can become an issue because of translations of language and because when a person says something, the meaning isn’t always clear. Each language has different words and different meanings which makes translations difficult. When a person uses sarcasm, what they say and what they mean are two completely different things. Communication is also difficult because it can be perceived in so many different ways. If two American high schoolers are talking in the hallway, some of the language that they might use can be perceived as meaningless nonsense by a teacher or parent. If someone gives a compliment to someone else such as, "nice shoes,"” depending on the tone use when saying it the intended compliment can be taken as a compliment or an insult.

There are many struggles with the communication process. One of the biggest problems is communicating with someone who is hundreds of miles away. Humans have developed many ways to do this but how convenient something is and how long it takes can be two completely different things. If someone made a 1:00 pm business call from the United States to a business partner in China, the call would be very inconvenient for the person in China because it would be around 3:00 am local time. Other potential problems with communication can be how long it takes for a letter to arrive, or troubles with translations of languages and cultural differences. One example of a mistake in translation would be JFK’s "Ich bin ein Berliner,"” speech. He should have dropped the ein, because without it, there wouldn’t have been any confusion. This one, three-lettered word changed the meaning from "I am a person from Berlin,"” to "I am a jelly doughnut"”

Humans are social creatures, so how we communicate is very important. With businesses taking their franchises to the global level, and wars depending on the success of politics between every country, global communications are going to become one of the most important things of our time.