What to do about Comm-Ent?
When I wrote “The Comm-Ent Complex” in business school, I thought that leaders just needed to “get with the program.”
Think, speak and present visually in multiple media. Keep your TV-saturated, easily-distracted, Internet-addicted audience engaged.
Do I still believe that? I guess so. But I also believe that just being a Comm-Ent star performer without values that support people, (customers, workers, and community) may lead to amoral manipulation.
What can individuals do to build this value set despite the tsunami of Comm-Ent media?
Try to disaggregate communications from entertainment in your mind. It’s fine to be entertained and be informed, but I try to recognize when I’m doing each. And if I’m watching political satire, I make sure it isn’t my only source for news.
Fight the addiction. I don’t know if there is a twelve-step program for Comm-Ent yet, but if there is it might include:
- Unplug periodically. Have a Comm-Ent-free day, week, or hour. Turn off your phone, TV, don’t respond to emails or texts, and take your earbuds out.
- Look at things and admire the beauty without taking a picture.
- Watch a TV program without sound. It is easier to see individual shots and perceive the production choice of images and therefore to understand the subtle packaging of the message behind the medium.
- Stop forwarding stuff by text and email. Assume that most online virals are fake. Investigate or hit delete.
- Call instead of text; see someone personally instead of calling.
Work on developing critical thinking for yourself and those you love.
- Look for sources in what you read and watch – expect multiple sources.
- Confirm truth, and analyze implications for action.
- Seek different points of view.
- Converse, both listen and talk.
Find ways to encourage ideas, real information, thought. Read a book, talk about it. See a film or TV show and talk about it. Watch or read it again.
Save some time for reflection. Meditate, go for a mindful walk in nature, be open to serendipity, take a different route, meet someone new, and try unusual food. Per the Apple slogan, “Think Different!”
What a powerful post! This is a real good read and there is a lot one can agree with.
Our society is increasingly dependent on information and communication technologies, both for its functioning and for its development. A growing number of people spend their entire adult life connected to tools such as social networks, e-mail, the World Wide Web, investing, in addition to economic resources (purchase of phones, tablets, computers, telephone credit, etc.) , and above all, an important resource for everyone: their time.
Perhaps if there is an addiction, it is not on technology, but on the mental habits that technology allows us to have. The machines, which we invented to save us time with their applications, are taking it all back, and perhaps even more.
Thank you, Aldo, for reading and engaging.
I’m now one of those people who “spend their entire adult life connected to tools” – some of it valuable, some not so much/
I do think it is useful to train ourselves to use these tools more effectively.
My mother was a math whiz who could do compound interest problems in her head. She encouraged my NOT to use a calculator. “That thing will rot your brain!”
One day I caught myself dividing a figure by 10 on the calculator. Ske was right.
Thanks again for your insight.
Alan
Excellent piece, Alan.
I believe Tim Wu’s The Master Switch describes another aspect of the same problem: How those who used to supply the logistics for transporting info-whatever at one point decide to deliver content as well. Cue Netflix and Amazon in-house productions.
Nothing remotely nuanced can be delivered in 20 sec soundbites.
Your statistics are downright scary. While I accept that work and productive interpersonal meetings (Friendshipbench and other) is part of screen time, what has been taken away when screen time goes up? Free play and presence with the people we love.
Hi Charlotte
Thanks for your comment here.
Yes there are a small number of companies that control what we see and hear. Everyone wants to make content. The days of someone managing the pipes and someone creating what runs through them are over.
Is it ripe for those with an agenda? I think so.
Of course, not everything is a big conspiracy to dumb down the masses so the oligarchs can rule.
Or is it?
Thanks again.
Alan
Brother Ali
I’m in a fog today so it is unclear if we are becoming shallow, or I am becoine senile (See Nile -yes and I’d like to see the pyramids too.)
I don’t think everything needs to be serious -or that we can’t be entertained, only that we might base our actions upon truth and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.
Alan
Brother Alan, fantastic elaboration on communication and its development with technological advances.
I wonder with such huge interruptions if shallowness is increasing. You can see this in social gathering and in lecture rooms. People keep checking their mobiles discretely and indiscreetly.
Have we entered the age of chaotic communication?.