The Power of Communication

During our class, several ideas about the power of communication have been brought up, ranging from the stick figure drawing on the first day, to Derrida's piece, and even some of my own observations.  The drawing on the first day consisted of two people on either sides of a wall and what would happen if they tried to communicate? Seemingly boring at first, but what if they have different meanings for certain words (i.e. what if one person says dog, but to the other person, a dog is really a tree) are they still communicating the same thing? Personally, I believe that they are.  They have no way to know whether or not they are on the same level, since they cannot see the others vision. They can only rely on words.
Going off on a tangent, this makes me think of they types of communication that we rely on now and how they are effecting our relationships.  Technology has had a major impact on our modern communication.  We now use a combination of texting, email, online chatting, and phone calls to communicate more than actual face-to-face interaction.  Problem?  Only 7% of communication is actually the words we speak.  55% is body language and 38% is intonation.  So because texting, email, etc only allow us to use the 7%, we have to be EXTREMELY careful that the words we choose are conveying the exact message that we want. 7% leaves a lot of interpretation room that could result in a misunderstood message.  I often observe this in my text message conversations.  I will sit with a single message for an average of at least one minute contemplating different word choices to make sure that I am conveying my message appropriately.  I try to avoid awkward confrontation whenever possible!
The overall message that I'm trying to get across here is that our words have power.  And how we choose to use that could make things ugly, or empower us. Choose your words wisely!