Over Communication (June 2011)

Fart.  Maybe I’m just an old fart.  As a kid I was shy; as a teen, reserved; as an adult, phlegmatic; and now, as an oldster, often detached to the point of misanthropy.

But you know, I actually don’t believe I’ve changed much, if I’m not truly friendlier and more communicative than ever before in my life.

It’s the contrast that sets me apart.  The entire world is increasingly linked by wire and now through the ether.  Cell phone companies offer deals including 3000 free minutes a month…that’s 50 hours; more than an hour and a half every day.  And people think this is great, since obviously they need at least that many hours to keep up with friends and family.  Then there’s a 1000 free text messages.

I’m a scientist by training and obsessive compulsive by inclination, so let’s consider the raw numbers.  At two words per second (“one Mississippi, two Mississippi”), 3,000 free minutes is 180,000 words:  the length of a 250-page novel.  Add a 1,000 text messages, even short ones, might add another 20,000 words.

I haven’t considered ordinary email or Tweets or snail mail or landline phone calls.

What the fuck is everyone talking about?

We used to say that anyone who talks about a topic for more than ten minutes will start to repeat himself.

So the topic for today is over-communication.  I’ll try to speak my mind in less than 300 words (5 minutes) and stop before I repeat myself.

First off, I’ve heard it said that in this crowded and hard old world, it’s hard to stand out as an individual.  When I was a young businessman I’d wear a silk Jerry Garcia tie with my Brooks Brothers suit.  But I knew my boundries:  no Argyle socks, red suspenders, or brown shoes with a blue suit.  I carefully avoided stripped shirts and never mixed gold and silver in choosing my watch band, belt buckle, and cufflinks.

While your word would get you in the door, it was your presence that sold the deal:  your voice, your body-language, your appearance, and then your words.  You had to be cautious, never verbose, and stay ready to listen and STFU.

Pitches had to be short.  As a youngish research manager, my presentations to the Board of Directors of a Fortune 25 company were 7 ½ minutes long:  about 600 seconds or 1200 words, each measured for clarity, impact, and relevance.

When you’re asking for someone’s time, you’re costing them something.  Life is short.  Time is money.  Patience is thin.

A million dollar CEO earns around $60/minute of his office time.  None of it is free.  None of it carries over to the next month.  So in the business world, words are valued and husbanded carefully.  Of course valuable time is spent at both ends of the conversation.  With Tweets and other broadcast messages, time lost increases exponentially.  You might be stealing life from near strangers milliseconds at a time but it will add up.

I guess my overriding concern is that people are talking instead of thinking; thinking whether it comes in the form of dreams, fantasies, insight, growth in understanding, navel gazing, lint picking, or even those wonderful lapses into oblivion.  We going to lose our ability to think or contemplate, to grow and to chill.