CAN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH COMMUNICATION?

 

One of the key characteristics of being sentient beings is our ability to communicate with one another. In my lifetime, the ways in which we are now able to communicate have changed beyond all recognition. The speed of such change, thanks largely to advances in technology, is increasing beyond anything that most of us can begin to imagine. In the words of poet William Davies, ‘Where do we now have the time to stop and stare? 

I am old enough to appreciate the limitations imposed by good old-fashioned pen and paper and traditional ‘snail mail’, but how much poorer will our future culture and heritage be without the written word, and spoken tales, passed down through generations, preserved for centuries?  

Somehow text messaging and emails do not quite garner the same level of regard. As the number of communication methods increases, the amount of useful and meaningful communication seems to be heading downward. 

We are now expected to make ourselves available morning, noon, and night. Although we may now have the ability to watch hundreds of TV channels at any time, from anywhere in the world, much of what is presented to us adds little to our lives.  

Likewise, the ubiquitous use of social media enables each of us our five minutes of fame, as we share every detail of our mundane lives, but much of this information exchange is trivial and meaningless. There is also a wealth of evidence that the proliferation of social media, much as it is welcomed by some, has also been the cause of many of the modern-day social problems that have emerged.   

Involved in high level recruitment in recent months, I have been struck by the focus on communication displayed by candidates for senior positions. This is all well and good, but they fail to clarify their intentions. I suspect it is more a desire to communicate their objectives and successes to the wider public, than to actively encourage others to communicate with them. It is now virtually impossible to identify and communicate directly in person with a representative of any organisation, whether by telephone, email, or post. Whilst there may be plenty of communication, it is all one way, usually accompanied by a ‘donotreply’ notification. This is not true communication, more a dictatorial style of contact.  

I receive hundreds of emails a day, most of which are of little interest to me; unlikely to engage my attention or be of benefit to me. I delete them without reading their content. If in this great age of communication, we wish to engage with our audience, those who vote for us, or give us their business, their needs to be recognition that it must be brief and to the point, appropriate and relevant to the recipient, not the sender. We want to be treated like we matter, not just another statistic or tick in the box.