Noise Annoys

I have not posted anything this week as I have been away and now as I break that silence I am somewhat conflicted by thought that at least for a few days I added to the silence and not the noise.

My conflict comes from the sheer deluge of information that is flowing through the LCDs of our devices, coming at us from all angles with commentary added at each stop on each digital journey - useful, valuable insights spinning into a vortex along with the midly interesting and the downright inane. The end result of course being noise and when a thousand voices chatter nobody is really heard. And naturally we need to hear that which is worthwhile and could potentially help and enrich us. All of the media and channels of communications now available to us are gifts that we should cherish and use discriminately because if we don't we risk diminishing the importance of the messages they may carry.

But rather than simply draw attention to what I perceive as a problem (I am making no assumptions that you agree with me), I have decided to compile a list of considerations that I and my colleagues will review before blogging or tweeting in future:

• Twitter may force brevity but a torrent of pithiness taken in the aggregate can still become a lot of noise
• When do we cross over into saying far too much when we really have so little to say?
• When something is retweeted and reposted multiple times does the value of the information become unintentionally diminished?
• Do we actually pay less attention to something that we see posted/retweeted in multiple places than something we see in one place?
• Is the race to be the first to relay a piece of second-hand information, a race always worth winning if it runs the risk of becoming more about the race than the message?
• Are any of us listening or are we too busy “communicating”?
• When we fulfilled our social media obligations today – did we really add value?

Tell me what you think!