What would you do if someone offered you $1.3 million? And they’re not a Nigerian prince. Jump up and down singing We’re in the Money? That’s what I’d do. But if you had too many emails and text messages and RSS feeds on too many devices, you might miss it entirely. That’s what happened to Kord Campbell who ignored a legitimate email offering to buy his company for three days. We think we’re multi-tasking and productive but we’re really drowning in a sea, an ocean, a tidal wave of words, most of them useless.
This morning, I caught myself reading the paper while listening to the radio while drying my hair—none of them well. I spent an hour a day a few weeks ago unsubscribing to email newsletters. It didn’t work. I have 300 messages this morning, only two of them worth reading, none of them offering me $1.3 million—unless I missed that one.
We were asked in a presentation recently whether re-using content from other sources was a viable way to feed social networking groups. In other words, can I just push the same old stuff (a stronger word comes to mind) through all these new channels and annoy recipients in many ways instead of in only a couple of ways?
The revolution in media means that we can all be publishers. Fantastic. Revolutionary. Transformative. Exciting. But, in many ways, it’s also meant the death—or at least the temporary suspension—of editing. Like a teenager with too much on her mind and no filter between her brain and her mouth, we babble—inane, useless, maddening chatter. I am even annoyed with myself because when I do a blog post and submit it to all the groups I belong to on social networks, I get the same message from myself about six times! How stupid is that?
There are several thoughtful books on what all this is doing to us. The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Delete by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. In Pursuit of Silence by George Porchnik. Scientists say that we become addicted to the endorphin rush we get from the urgency of the whole thing.
I say… well, I say if you don’t have anything worth saying—and few of us do—then shut up!
Great post. I agree, especially on Twitter, the repetition of information is nauseating.