I recently came across this blog post summarising a talk by Michael Schwern at BarCampBlock about communication among geeks and between geeks and others. I recommend it to all, geek or otherwise, as it makes some interesting points about how geeks tend to communicate. One point I found interesting was about ‘tact filters’:
Most non-geeks have outbound tact filters: they filter what they want to say and add polite noise as it passes through. Geeks have inbound tact filters: they take bare communication with no politeness and just wrap it in assumed politeness as they interpret it.
When non-geeks talk, geeks think the polite sounds they make are redundant.
When geeks talk, non-geeks just think they’re being incredibly rude.
Do you think that this is true, and had you already realised it? What do you think of the rest of the article?
