Everything seems to be shrinking. Besides inflation (which is causing the value of money to shrink), there are two more things that are shrinking very fast: our attention span and our window to the world around us.
First, the shrinking attention span:
- Recently I came across a “research report”. It was called an “Infograph”. In about 15 graphs on a single long HTML page, a research on demographics of Social Media users worldwide and their Social Media behaviour had been conveyed. It took all of 6 “Pg Dn” keystrokes to see the graphs and about 10 minutes to digest the communication. Less than 5 years ago, the same data would have been presented in a 20 page pdf file with lot of words and commentary. Not so anymore. Crisp, to-the-point communication. So crisp that if you are not “into the subject matter”, those colourful graphs would remain just that. With substantially reduced attention spans, who really has the time or patience to ‘read’ a research report! We are now living in a world where research reports have become infographs and paragraphs have become tweets. Finally my 6th standard grammar précis writing classes are becoming useful. Today while writing tweets, the key challenge is how to communicate a complete thought process in 140 characters and also generate a question in order to create back flow of communication (If I remove the characters required for a bitly link and for RT), perhaps you need to finish the communication in 120 characters.
Now the shrinking window (no pun on “MS Windows”!)
- Once upon a time, our window to the world was all that our eyes could see if we turned our head from one side to another. Perhaps our eyes could “see” a radius of about 5 kms (if there was no obstruction).
- Then about 100 years ago, cinema screens were invented. A cinema screen was about 20ft x 20ft. Substantially smaller than our earlier window to the world, yet we could see and experience much more through this screen.
- Then 60 years ago, television was invented. The screens become smaller (24” x 12”), but our ability to see increased (now we have multiple channels to choose from).
- Then 30 years back, PC was invented. The screen further shrunk (12” x 5”), but our vision expanded. The WWW allowed to go just about anywhere you desired.
- And now the cell phone. Our screen size is just (2” x 1.5”).
It is interesting that our window to the world is continuously shrinking but our vision or ability to see more is actually increasing!
White paper on Social Media Mega Trends can be downloaded from http://www.socialwavelength.com/white-papers-download.php