Negotiation is Changing

Authors

Noam Ebner

Abstract

Many changes – those we notice, and those that escape our attention until we are quite a ways down a new path – are only the tip of the iceberg of the change that individuals and society are experiencing as a result of the technological developments of the past couple of decades. Introducing technology into every area of our lives, every aspect of our work, and every pocket of our clothes has far-reaching effects, which researchers are only just now uncovering.

We are not only changing our behaviors; we are being changed by our new behaviors: We now conduct our banking and shopping online; at the same time, we have changed in the degree of trust we have in technologically-mediated handling of our financial resources. We are not only interacting in new ways; we have created new communicative paths for supporting such interaction: While this may have been dismissed in the past as informal forms of slang used by younger people, many of us are, by now, familiar with a substantial dictionary of internet-age abbreviations; similarly, emoticons have emerged from a smiley and a frowning face into a highly nuanced set of emoji mini-images, capable of supporting entire messages, full conversations, and even literature. We are not only putting our bodies and our brains to work in new ways; our bodies, and especially our brains, are physiologically changing to adapt to these uses: Our brains are mapping out new neurological networks, developing some areas of the brain at the expense of others.

Recommended Citation

Noam Ebner, Negotiation is Changing, 2017 J. Disp. Resol. (2017)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/jdr/vol2017/iss1/10