The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Let me note that if LinkedIn is 60s then I'm there.

This blog post is about people's responses to changing technology. Specifically the more ubiquitous a technology is, the less appeal it has even though it is more used. We only notice it in absentia.

Case in point - we notice when there's no indoor plumbing, not when there is. We may comment on the extreme ("What a bee-yootiful bathroom you have! Where ever did you find that shower curtain?") but not on the simple fact that indoor plumbing exists. But explain to someone that the cabin you just spent half a day hiking to has no indoor plumbing and they look at you blankly while pulling their hair dryer from their backpack (no kidding, folks. This really happened).

Another nicety (at least in the climes I'm use to) is central heating. You really do notice it when it's not there, not when it is (unless you've just come in from a nor'easter).

How about phones. Simple telephones. I remember both rotary dialing, letter prefixes (NAtional 7-1583) and being able to lift the receiver to tell the operator you wanted "4123" and being connected. Party-lines taught you manners and how to eavesdrop intelligently. A sign of success, of wealth and prominence, was having a private line. Now we TXT and tweet and feel neglected and often betrayed if we're not connected immediately with dozens of people who can't live unless they know our every move (really? Does anybody truly believe they're that important?).

And consider cellphones themselves. I think I was one of the first to get a cellphone back in the late 1980s. I think it was a Toshiba and looked more like a WWII radiophone than anything you see today. I got it because I drove quite a bit and thought being able to contact destinations to let them know of schedule changes would be useful. Then I realized the phone only worked within sight of a tower and there were only ten or twelve towers between NH and New York, one between Nashua and Boston, none in Nova Scotia, so why bother?

But being one of the first? Everybody wanted to use my cellphone just to call someone and tell them they were talking on a CELLphone, wasn't that neat?

You think dropped calls are a problem now, you should've been playing back then.

Now everybody has a cellphone. There are specialized phones for children and the elderly and most people can't imagine life without one.

So blogs are so out. Only because everybody has one.

Give me time...I might even send you a tweet someday...NOT!

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Upcoming Trainings:

• Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08

• International Communication Association's Communicating for Social Impact, the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association at Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 22-26, 2008
• SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08

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