The Dark Side of Progress

I do my best in keeping this blog focused on the Direct Communications industry. Forgive me in advance if I digress in the course of making my point.

A recent re-broadcast of The Engines of Our Ingenuity brought up the tricky feat of defining "progress" and used the Post Office and email as a model. If you don't read any further, I suggest at least visiting the link above and listening to the 4 minute clip and checking out the illustrations.
As we "progress" from sending physical notes via the USPS to other digital options, we are gaining and losing in the process. Here are what I consider to be some of the obvious pros and some very serious (IMHO) cons.

Pros:
- Immediacy. When I want to send someone a message, I can do so in a manner that politely puts my note in a digital queue that the recipient can read as soon as they are free. Faster than a letter but less intrusive than a phone call.

- Low cost. Not counting the massive effort in designing and building the infrastructure. Actually sending a message has become practically free. Of course we pay monthly for the privilege but even a high estimate of $.05 each is a massive cut compared to the cost of a stamp.

- Convenience. Instead of all the effort that is involved in buying stationary and stamps, hand-writing a letter and looking up certain words in a dictionary, I can simply send an email or text from wherever I am and let the computer automatically correct all those words that I find tricky to spell.

- Broadcasting. The advantage in being able to CC people in an email or "tweet" to a list of followers saves enumerable time and effort.

Cons:
- Immediacy. I'm sure that letters have been sent in haste but I have no doubt that today's generation is far more at risk of saying the wrong thing or tweeting the wrong body part :o (see "broadcasting" below). Recently, "real-time marketing" has gotten brands like KLM in trouble for tweeting inappropriate comments without thinking through the consequences.

- Low Cost. Part of the reason for the savings is the automation. Automation typically means less people employed to deliver the message. For hundreds of years, people have feared the looming threat of being replaced by "robots" and "computers." In my lifetime, I've seen many jobs out-moded by technology and the USPS is currently in a death-spiral that they would certainly NOT consider progress. Low cost to deliver is the number 1 facilitator for the glut of "spam" which annoys recipients and hurts legitimate communicators.

- Convenience. How could this be a negative consequence? This blog is admittedly one example of the plethora of documents that are being published today. Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, has been credited in saying that "more content (information) is created now every 48 hours than was created since the beginning of time to 2003". Personally, I see that as a "con" because that massive pile of data consists primarily of regurgitated and uninformed drivel that simply makes the truly innovative and informative gems that much harder to find. I, for example, don't need to go to a lot of trouble to distribute my blog, I just click a button and it's there but, because of the sheer volume of content, fewer people will find this article simply by googling for the content.

- Broadcasting. Nowadays, instead of me making the mistake of being offensive to someone's face, I have the opportunity to offend the entire internet with almost no real means of taking it back. In fact, as in the KLM case mentioned above, even "deleting" a tweet doesn't remove all the screenshots that offended people took and reposted.

I suppose the call to action of this post would be to simply be aware of the consequences of your actions. Take a second to think before sending that tweet. Take your agency's promise to acquire new business through content with a grain of salt. Do favor delivering valuable content to interested customers periodically, over an every day "blast" or you'll wear them out. Look beyond your cost per send/impression to your return on investment or at least your cost per action.

In the coming years, communicators like myself will have the opportunity to reshape what has become somewhat of a wild west situation. The internet is a vast, seemingly unlimited resource that is a paradigm shift affecting almost every aspect of our lives. Someone, either the government (shudder!) or the providers (good luck with getting consensus) will need to get together to police the landscape. Luckily, there are organizations like m3aawg.org  and cauce.org along with several blacklisting directories that are working to make messaging better for the masses.