John Bechtel, writer, on overcoming media overwhelm: Take a break from the clock!
With both online and social media communication, we have lost our way. We have forgotten that less is more.
Quantity has totally trumped quality. Social media dominated by commercial interests is no longer social, but just another technology pressed into the service of broadcast (or should I say bombast) media. Instead of being touched by the messages, we are bombarded by propaganda. Commerce has always been about selling, but seduced by technology, the volume has become so loud that it is virtually impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation. It is increasingly difficult to read a simple message of only a couple paragraphs without our screen being invaded by persistent banners, pop-up advertising and unprompted audio and video. We have become a mass population afflicted with attention-deficit disorder on steroids.
Personal Isolation is Growing
As a result, communication in the sense of gaining the trust and confidence of each other is atrophying and personal isolation is growing. Imagine being on a first date with someone you might be seriously interested in developing a relationship with, and over the course of dinner your conversation is continually interrupted by your guest sending and receiving messages on his/her smart phone. What is the message to you? ‘Please wait, this current interruption may be from someone more important than you and this dinner.’ This lends a very literal significance to the term instant gratification, where the party that interrupts achieves instant and often undeserved top priority. In the process, you have been devalued. (more…)
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