Welcome to Quration - a series of stand-out stories about technological disruption.
In today's edition, I throw my hands up in the air over the way we communicate!
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Crossed Communications
The holiday season is almost upon us, so I wasnât surprised to see an advertisement for Christmas cards pop up in my newsfeed. But then I was. Why havenât Christmas cards gone digital, like every other type of human communication?
E-cards were one of the earliest gimmicks on the internet, but somehow they just didnât end up dominating the category. Even now, the $7.5B US greeting card market has seen a resurgence, and thereâs still a bunch of startups trying to cause a disruption.
After 30 years of being internet connected and mobile-app enabled, some of the ways we communicate have been completely transformed. Others, not so much. Why?
If anything, the way we say âHappy [Birthday / Holidays / New Year]â has moved to text messaging and chat apps rather than to another electronic card alternative.
Meetings at work have now famously moved to Zoom, Teams, or some other video-based variant.
Arranging anything for you kids at school is now done through an endless deluge of WhatsApp messages.
TV / Radio interviews have found a new home as long-winded podcasts.
Conference presentations are less painful on YouTube. The good ones, on TED.
Debates have moved to Twitter.
Formal has given way to informal. Information works best when thereâs a connection. And, in this age of noise, frequency is everything.
Distributed Communication Matrix
I think that whole shift is best observed in a matrix that tracks the communication STYLE (Formal to Informal), INTIMACY (Information to Connection) and FREQUENCY (Less to More).
When it comes to STYLE and FREQUENCY, the only way is up! Our communications are definitely becoming more frequent and more informal.
Entertainment has shifted from formal viewing schedules, and periodical content to binge-watching bite-sized pieces of content. Netflix series, YouTube how-toâs and Twitch banter.
Catch-up calls to your inner circle relationships saw a step-change when mobile phones arrived. Weâve since leapt to near zero downtime thanks to messages and chat.
In years gone by, you would wait for an appearance, or book release, from your favourite author or celebrity to get their latest opinions. Now, the debate rages 24/7 on Twitter, podcasts and YouTube. Fandom has given way to fatigue.
Interestingly, the appropriate method of communication seems to be determined along the lines of INTIMACY. Case in point:
Amanda made the mistake of using a high-frequency, high-connection channel - a group text chain - to communicate something that belonged in the low-frequency, information-focused category. She crossed the boundaries, and her friends didnât like it!
A better approach would have been to email her group text friends. Same people, different context.
Amanda didnât know the rules of the matrix:
If you want to promote something, the style of approach is up to you (formal / informal), but should stay out of the connection zone. That is too personal, and you havenât been invited. Use: email, twitter, zoom, website, youtube, podcast, ads;
If you want to connect with someone close to you, informal is better, keep it short and often. Too formal, and too much info, kills the relationship connection. Use: text, chat, and calls (if youâre over 50);
Work & School comms are tricky. You have relationships with people, but the topics discussed arenât always enjoyable. If the topic is personal, you can step into the connected + frequent zone. If itâs about work tasks, especially something bothersome, err towards infrequent and formal.
Same, but different
Tech companies love to talk about disruption. Sometimes a new product or service completely changes the way we do something (Netflix). But more often than not, a start-up just changes who gets the money.
So it is with most shifts in communication. Theyâre pretty much the same thing, just more convenient because they are available online.
Same conference presentation, just recorded and played on demand.
Same classroom cliqueâs, reinforced on WhatsApp rather than the school carpark.
Same celebrity interview, just a LOT longer, and now played as a podcast.
Appetite for disruption
There is one category that I think is ripe for genuine disruption.
Like greeting cards, books havenât moved anywhere interesting in a long while. You may be shouting the name âAmazonâ right now, and yes, Bezos did create the worldâs most successful tech company by elevating the humble book. He even transformed them into electronic versions that you can read online (Kindle) or have someone read to you (Audible).
But, the book itself hasnât changed. How you access them has changed.
In his masterwork, How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler laid out a timeless approach to getting the most out of a book. I canât do it justice here, but there are a few key thoughts that we could use to consider a transformed book experience.
For this hypothesis, Iâll assume we are referring to non-fiction books, and a software application that can be used on a mobile device or desktop computer.
First, how you approach a book is important. Adler suggests that you start by skimming the book in the following order, to get a good understanding before you begin reading:
Title â Take a moment to read it aloud. What does it tell you to expect?
Contents â How has the author structured their work? How does it flow? What are the pivotal chapters?
Index â What terms are most frequently referenced? Do any surprise you?
Publisherâs blurb â What does the publisher think is important? How have they synthesised the work?
Authorâs preface â What does the author want you to take away? How do they want you to read?
Why donât we have a reading interface that lays out these elements of the book in this order? Or, for that matter, why canât we select one of a dozen layouts that best suits our preferred method of understanding the material?
Adler also suggests a bottom-up approach to help clarify what the author is saying:
Spot all the keywords and understand what the author means by them;
Distil the key propositions from the authorâs most important sentences;
Find or build the authorâs arguments from sequences of sentences; and
Decide which problems the author has or hasnât solved.
Again, thereâs no reason why keywords, important sentences, and authorâs arguments canât be presented to the reader. Prompts outlining each problem would also be a useful step for considering solutions.
The last idea Iâd like to see addressed in Book 2.0, is support for synoptic reading.
Synoptic reading is the art of exploring a question or subject by reading widely.Â
Itâs not about reaching conclusions. Instead, itâs about putting together a really good map. Itâs about discovering and noting the landmarks, the sights and the hazards so that when you do set out on the journey, youâre the best-informed traveller on the road.
Imagine having immediate access to the keywords, important sentences and author arguments, from every book listed in the bibliography. How useful would it be to have those referenced side-by-side, with commentary on the gaps between views and their differing approaches to solving topical problems?
Of course, this would require a crazy amount of work for each author to make their materials this accessible. And any editing work will only be as good as the labour hired to do the analysis and comparison. Unless, of course, an AI system was given the task. Immediately, youâd have access to every work available, and the smartest mind in the room working on summaries, cross-references, and reading layouts.
Books, entertainment, media, news, and every other type of content are on the same hockey-stick trajectory as our own communications. Some things will benefit from AI-enabled transformation. Others, like the humble gift card, seem destined to remain with us, just as they are, for the foreseeable future.
If you'd like to see more of what I'm exploring, you can follow me on twitter. If you've come across something you think I'd like, hit reply and let me know why it's worth checking out (articles, lectures, podcasts, books, exhibitions⌠whatever).