Just about every delivery of mail brings several appeals for donations to this or that. Lynn has taken to writing to the charities saying one request per year or no more donations at all. She is interested in the mailing budget used by some of them and the % of the whole operation that goes to pointless asking. We realize it is a type of advertising and that some of the causes are quite worthwhile but there is a limit to our funds and even our willingness to open yet another document. We also realize that we have little responsibility for the pathetic doggie or kitty or birdie pictured on the envelope.
The book that has had the biggest effect on me concerning the information downpour these days is “Too Big to Know” by David Weinberger at the Harvard Law Library. He shows in many ways that today’s internet and the tools for accessing it, in our offices and in our pockets, make possible a steady diet of frightening, confusing, challenging information, counterinformation, insults, put-downs and other painful reading. Along with “Too Big” is “The Information Diet” by Clay Johnson. “Diet” relates the story of a sharp and energetic young man’s immersion in just one side of an argument (who should be the next President?) without realizing the extent to which he and his circle of contacts twisted everything in the same direction in an unconscious group effort to keep an upbeat and united view.
In communicating with people, I often find that one channel, mode or type of information is favored and unless I use that favored sort of messaging, I won’t get through. The classic example is texting to young people. The middle-aged and older parents were just saying last night that their adult children don’t answer the phone but respond very quickly to a text. (That is why I keep urging people to give Google Voice a try. Texting can be free on it.)
But there are people, and I suspect their numbers may be on the increase, who have simply had enough. They don’t want ads, attention, explanation, mansplaining (when a male plumber or politician explains to an experienced good-looking woman physician how to take blood pressure). They basically don’t want to be interrupted, bothered, or contacted. They can be in the Charles de Gaulle position: “If I want to talk to you, I’ll phone you.” That’s the arrangement about which Lynn asked what would happen to the phone system if everyone took that position. Such people want to be let alone. Despite my good intentions, my deep knowledge and my sweet and tasty way of putting things, they don’t want to hear from me. Or you.
As I say, I think the number of people who have a wonderful agenda that is quite full and simply do not want contacts is growing, but maybe slowly. There seem to me to some good reasons to suppose that. If there is an increase in demand to be let alone, and I emphasize that ‘If”, I suspect there may be more tools at hand to arrange to be protected from communication than we might guess.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
