For those of you who skipped high school English, the title of this article is by Shakespeare comma Bill.

Sir William makes many references to “discerning emotions via non-verbal means” in his vast writings. In fact, fifteenth century traders (his contemporaries) were quite attuned to either spending, or not spending great sums of time and money based upon both the unstated and/or understated positions of their business acquaintances.

Camel traders, for instance, were particularly concerned with the eyes. A world-class camel buyer, for instance, would partake of a naturally occurring drug called Belladonna; this otherwise harmless seed when properly administered would have the net effect of dilating one’s pupils for a thirty-to-sixty minute period. This, in turn, was extremely useful to the buyer of the animal; after all, the desert-walking salesmen of this era were quite adroit at terms of watching the buyer’s pupils --- so if the buyer liked what he saw, the seller saw the pupil dilate and his sale price simultaneously increased.

You get it, I’m sure.

In the late nineteen sixties and seventies, the ‘art’ of reading another’s body language was elevated considerably. Terms like “mirror congruence”, and “detrimental empathy” came into play --- all egghead jargon for equating certain body movements and gesticulations with their emitter’s true and subconscious intentions.

I profess to know a great deal about this whole area of study --- I actually wrote a Masters Degree Thesis on the topic, “Non-Verbal Communications in Direct Selling” at Pitt. More importantly, I was able to vastly improve my sales hit rate simply by keeping a watchful eye on the body language of my erstwhile customers.

To some extent, we are all experts in non-verbal communications. Think about that look on your wife’s face when you say or do something that is just a bit out-of-skew. Think of the arms-folded pose struck by your boss as you make a case for a higher commission rate or salary.

Which brings me to my point. With so much communicating by electronic means these days, how do you gain a full and true picture of someone else’s feelings regarding your product, service, and/or you without being able to study their behavior as necessary?

Well, the truth of the matter is that one probably can’t. And so there goes one more “brick in the wall”, vis-à-vis humankind’s ability to grasp another’s true feelings about some product, service, issue, or idea.

And what happens then? More failed relationships? More marketing misfires?

Will we eventually, due to a lack of practice, lose our ability to truly understand one another?

Will we see ourselves guessing more … and knowing less?

I watch my seven-year old play with his best friend and I shake my head. My son is on one side of the playroom … fingers literally flying across the keyboard … while his buddy is doing the same thing at the same time, but some ten feet away!

After hours of this, we drive his friend back to his home … where the gaming attitude continues as they shoot e-mails (or some derivative of e-mail) back and forth.

Hey, think of the cavemen. Isn’t this essentially how they lived? Each individual was clearly unable to communicate verbally, but at the same time they were able to entertain themselves in their part of the cave … playing some B.C. version of Pokemon whilst etching icons into the walls of their domicile.

When I started my first business --- way back in 1972 --- we chose between hand-written (and then transcribed) business letters and a physical visit to the prospect or client. Of course, the telephone was the key weapon of choice.

Later on came the overnight letter and voicemail. Now, and for the first time, we were putting a good bit of anonymity between the two communicators.

Ultimately, we moved on to e-mail, instant messaging, and advanced voicemail. One can now go an entire day without ever actually speaking to another human being. It is by no means impossible to last an entire week in this state of anonymity. Even longer, in fact.

And do we ever see or hear about the individual who is trying to influence us? Why of course not!

So what does it all mean?

A thousand years ago, when I was a senior in college, I took a course entitled, Theories of Management. It was one of those "knock-off, finish your major/senior year" type of courses. As it was ending, our professor summed up the fifteen weeks by saying, "So, as you've all learned this semester, all the world is a communications problem. Whether it is a business, a relationship between a married couple, or just two guys arguing in a bar, everything comes down to the ability to thoroughly communicate with the other guy. Communicate well, and the problem generally gets solved. Communicate poorly, and you might have World War III."

Well, I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I've historically done my very best communicating whenever I've been one-on-one and face-to-face with the other party. In fact, it's almost axiomatic that this is so.

But if the future is "communications by proxy" (or worse, by avatar), then I can see a hell of a lot more confusion and frustration to all parties. It’s why I hate e-mail, really ... e-mail messages, unlike conversation, leave no room for immediate clarification of meaning; leaving way too much time for the confused recipients to discern the meaning or intent of the sender. In either case, and at a minimum, someone becomes angry.

So give me two chairs and a table any day. I'll happily take my chances from there!