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Post by Bruce Partington-Plans on Nov 19, 2023 13:14:07 GMT
I'll keep this short.  Do we think that society has embraced a more succinct communication style over the last 20-odd years? |
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Post by Bruce Partington-Plans on Nov 21, 2023 14:24:30 GMT
It may just be me but I get the distinct feeling nowadays that in every sphere of life I need to keep my communication concise in order to hold the attention of the person I am conversing with. I admit to being a lover of the written word and occasionally something of a rambler but frequently I find me saying to myself things like "Get to the point, Bruce", "Do you really need to add that? Does it help?", or "Will this bore them?". I think this goes even beyond the best practices we were taught in English Language classes at school and I cannot help but think that that old bête noire social media is again (in part) the culprit. With so much discourse now reduced to monosyllables, acronyms, "hashtags" and emojis is it any wonder that the average person's attention span has now reduced to a level where they cannot be bothered to read even an entire sentence (witness the rise of the acronym TL;DR - "too long; didn't read)?
The last thing one wants is to be a bore but I do miss in-depth discussions and I wonder whether the current perceived level of brevity in the world is the new norm, if we are on an irreversible downward trajectory or whether we can return to the halcyon days of discursive debates and wordy musings.
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Post by baronsolf on Nov 25, 2023 17:43:07 GMT
I guess it depends on the moment and context. For example, today I was in a meeting of the French version of the R.N.L.I., of which I shall shortly be a qualified member. What could have been a 45 minute meeting took almost two hours. It was , however interesting and informative. I feel more that the attention span has been diminished rather than how we communicate.
I must thank you for teaching me what TL;DR meant, this does sum up a lot of the modern way of thinking. If it hasn't got pictures, I'm not interested.
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Post by Bruce Partington-Plans on Nov 25, 2023 18:01:27 GMT
I guess it depends on the moment and context. For example, today I was in a meeting of the French version of the R.N.L.I., of which I shall shortly be a qualified member. What could have been a 45 minute meeting took almost two hours. It was , however interesting and informative. I feel more that the attention span has been diminished rather than how we communicate. I must thank you for teaching me what TL;DR meant, this does sum up a lot of the modern way of thinking. If it hasn't got pictures, I'm not interested. Interesting to hear your view, Solf old bean. I've wondered if I'm just noticing more my adapting to modern attitudes rather than a particular change to ways we communicate. The suggestion has also been made that it is perhaps the amount of information we are now regularly bombarded with, as a result of the advancement of technology, that has led to this change which I feel have detected over the last two decades. Of course I wouldn't expect a meeting of the French version of anything to take less than two hours. I assume the remaining 75 minutes involved copious amounts of cheese, wine and insouciant gesticulating?  |
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Post by baronsolf on Nov 25, 2023 18:36:19 GMT
I agree. We no longer take an hour to read the newspapers sadly. Letter writing has gone out of the window. Tis a sad world in which we live.
You have of course summed the meeting up perfectly.
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