My Blackberry = Good Relationships

Phil Towne — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:01:02 -0800

Have you seen the new Nextel Blackberry commercial? This commercial is brilliant. It is not brilliant because it is made so well (although the production value seems good to me). It is not brilliant because of the product (although I hear Blackberrys are great phones). It is brilliant because of the story it tells.

Have you noticed all of the best or most memorable commercials tell a story. There is the old Nextel commercial where people get married quickly utilizing their Nextel phones or the one where the businessmen cut a deal quickly because of their phones. But this one is even more brilliant.

The commercial tells the story of two people, a couple, who are having trouble working out their difficulties. Many of us have been there, while in a relationship. Bad communication and trouble connecting, affect two people causing a rift between them resulting in the necessary “talk.”

Attempting to talk it out in a restaurant doesn’t go well. The girl ends up storming out and heads down the sidewalk. Thankfully, his trusty Blackberry comes to the rescue. He texts her. She gets it, turns around, and then embraces him as he exits the diner.

Thank God for allowing our communication to be assisted by a Blackberry.

This commercial brings up so many interesting observations and questions. It is clearly implied that digital communication is easier and more effective than face-to-face communication. That is exactly what Nextel was getting at. Far from discounting this idea, I am more inclined to affirm that most people find digitally mediated communication easier and more effective than face-to-face communication. But is this good?

How many readers have unlimited text plans? Many find they do more communication via text than in-person anymore. Just the other day, I drove to a friend’s house to pick him up. I called twice to tell him I was there, but no answer. I then sent a text message, to which he replied immediately that he would be right out.

What does this sort of communication do to us? Are we being altered by our chosen mediums? How does this affect the way people think and write? In classes I teach, I am seeing text language creep into my student’s papers and correspondence.

But back to the point. Do we really want our relationships to be mediated by a cell phone? While perhaps efficient at some forms of communication, let this not be a substitute for authentic, real, heart-to-heart relationship. Real relationships are hard, requiring effort. Let us not forsake the meeting together as some are now in the habit of doing.

Phil

Can I Have Your Attention Please?

Stan Jantz — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:51:05 -0800

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a general description applied to people who have trouble staying focused on something, such as a task, a conversation, or minor surgery. People with ADD are often inattentive, impulsive, and hyper-active--pretty good characteristics for creative types, but not so good for people who operate heavy machinery or dispense prescription medication.

Actually, people I know with ADD are quite happy with their "condition," and I'll admit they're fun to be around. They're happy, lively, and good at delivering clever one-liners. Still, I wouldn't want all my friends to have short-attention spans. I need a few people in my life who at least act like they're paying attention to what I have to say, even if I'm babbling.

I'm finding that it's getting more difficult to find people who pay attention. The whole world, it seems, has ADD, and it's not because everyone is drinking the same kool-aid--unless the kool-aid happens to be a Blackberry or an iPhone. Call me an anti-luddite, but the way I see it, our collective ADD is directly related to our dependency upon--or maybe I should say our addiction to--hand-held electronic communication devices, and it's killing the practice of paying attention.

Obviously, I'm not the first one to notice this. Linda Stone, who's held VP positions at Apple and Microsoft, first coined the phrase "continuous partial attention" more than ten years ago to describe a condition wherein people pay partial attention...continously. It's always been around, but with the proliferation of mobile electronic devices that give us the ability to instantly connect with people 24/7, continuous partial attention has come to dominate our lives.

It's not that Blackberries, iPhones and iPods are in themselves evil. But when they come to define who we are and how we communicate, these devices we use to connect with others end up disconnecting us. As Linda Stone observes, "We are so accessible, we're inaccessiable."

Bill McKibben, writing the Foreword to an excellent book by Maggie Jackson entitled Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, agrees: "Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment."

So what do we do? Chuck our Blackberries into the sea? Melt down our iPhones and iPods into costume jewelry? Obviously, that's not the answer, although on more than one occasion I have had to suppress the urge to grab some annoying person's cellphone and throw it across the room (you know what I'm talking about). No, the problem is not the device. It's the user. It's us. When I ask the question, "So what do we do?" I really mean, "So what do we do with us?"

If you have any ideas or practical steps you've taken to pay more attention to tasks, conversations, and minor surgery, I'd love to hear them, and so would the rest of the Conversant community.