July 17, 2009 Comments

Do you feel like J.L. Gotrocks?

By David Alston in social media

Ok, one of my favorite episodes of The Flintstones is where Fred fills in for look-alike and wealthy business tycoon, J.L. Gotrocks.  The episode has a famous scene where Fred is answering multiple phones frantically saying three lines – “Whose baby is that?”, “What’s your angle?” and “I’ll buy that.”  It was a classic scene that has been wonderously burned into my mind for more years than I care to state.

Image credit from http://yabadabadoo.files.wordpress.com
So why is that scene popping up in my head a lot more these days?  It’s certainly not because of “the answering of multiple phones” because I rarely use that device for communications.  What I am noticing these days is that my day is non-stop digital communications.  I probably send and receive close to 350+ emails, DM’s, tweets, FB emails, in a given day.  And I have a feeling that many of you are probably in the same boat.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the communication, networking, problem-solving, sharing, helping, brainstorming that it all brings.  It also brings the challenge of becoming all consuming in many ways.

I could look back on the early days of my career at the phone company when I used to go to “meetings” and spend an hour typing-printing-stuffing interoffice envelopes to send out a single message.  I remember 20 voicemails a day and actually having a phone on my desk that would ring.  Would I want to go back to that?  No way, but it often makes me wonder where we will be in 5 years extrapolating on the communication styles we have now.

Non-realtime communication messages do not stop when you sleep, go on vacation, attend a conference, or do one of those old fashion “meetings” – they just pool up behind the faucet waiting to spill out when you return.  I wonder where this will go.

  • How will it scale when in many ways it doesn’t even scale now on an individual basis?
  • What wonders will come along to change things yet again?
  • Will we look back and laugh at this blog post in 5 years at the rediculously small number of 350+ as we brag about the 1000+ messages we consume and react to on a daily basis?

Do you feel like J.L. Gotrocks today?  What’s your plan for tomorrow?

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  • David,

    I am not sure I agree with your prediction. The beauty of email, wave, and even IM is that we can respond on OUR time.

    That is the main difference between those tools and the phone. Phone requires answering when it rings or it goes to VM which is similar to email.

    I believe that your video scenario may replace phone, and it might decrease use of IM, but I do not believe it will decrease the user of email, nor apps like twitter and fbook. Remember, text can be skimmed, video cannot.
  • I predict that the rise of rapid, simple video communication will bring a massive decline in the number of messages that contribute to 'conversations'. Don't we already spend ridiculous amounts of time thinking about the 'right' (clever, funny, insightful) way to respond to an email/FB message/blog post? If we were sitting in the same room (which is what the next wave of video comms will be like), we'll just look into the camera...say our piece (perhaps even in real time because we'll see who's online immediately)...and save ourselves a ten email back-and-forth!
  • @chris Well dang, that sucks! Sorry about that. I hate the bloody captcha myself but it was my first defense to the spammers that were all over me like a dirty shirt a while back. I guess I need to take another look at the whole comment process I have set up. Hopefully you'll be able to tell me about your cool thoughts over a beer sometime.
  • Sad - I just finished a funny, and informative comment here, but failed to copy onto clip-board before typing Captcha code into box below. Now it is lost in space, effort wasted, thoughts lost. Dang! Maybe there was a cosmic reason for this, maybe the iGod's are telling me to STOP 'shouting' and start listening online. Who knows... sorry you missed my words, and are stuck with these.

    Perhaps FRED, can come up with a better system than CAPTCHA to punish the good people with one more step to sound off. I know for one - the universe would be better without it; especially after my self-loved rant comments were just lost.

    Let's try again, and then go back to work.
  • @billy LOL. I hope she answered "It's yours" :)
  • Billy Jones
    I felt like that today. Saw a baby inside my wife during an ultrasound and I said "Whose baby is that?"
  • Maybe Google Wave will save the day and move us all to the next level - I'm sure they'd like to see that happen :)
  • I like it too, David, the ease of communication, but also think it will lead to more stress for a lot of people as others expect instant answers and responses from them.

    John.
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