All these advances, the ones bringing our world more closely together, they’ve given us so much. But just as surely, they taketh away.
And perhaps it’s always been that way, particularly with revolutions in how we communicate. The invention of writing, some eight or ten millennia ago, gave us our first non-wetware capability for information transmission. But it also spelled the end of the nearly supernatural feats of memory exhibited by the shamans and storytellers, who’d been keeping and sharing the tribal legacies since the Stone Age. And likewise, with the coming of the printing press, away went the gorgeous handcrafted product of the calligraphers and scriptoria.
The communications revolution we’re living right now is arguably (or maybe barely arguably) the most profound thus far. Starting with desktop publishing in the nineties, then on to the World Wide Web and the social media explosion as we know them today, we’ve been effectively handed a global, instantaneous platform for spreading information and sharing ideas. Non-local communication is no longer the purview of the elite, but rather the birthright of nearly all of humanity.
And what, pray tell, might that taketh away?
Novelist and copywriter Robert Cormack warned recently of a coarsening of society, of a “vulgarization”, as he called it. He points an accusatory finger at the advertising industry, perhaps not unfairly, calling attention to our command of mass media and asking us to examine our motives and commitment to the higher good.
They’re questions worth asking, to be sure, and we certainly call upon ourselves and our colleagues to let our consciences be our guides.
But given that mass media is now truly massive, and that we’re all content creators, we think it’s wise to cast a wider net, and to plead for communal responsibility, for leadership from the trenches.
Every single one of us can decide, each time we mount our digital soapboxes, whether we’re about to contribute to an elevation of the global conversation, or to its lowest common denominator. We can choose whether the content we create—be it a ten-thousand word blogifesto or a dashed-off tweet—makes people think, or makes them cringe.
This colossal platform of ours invites unexpurgated input, but it also permits anonymity and it winks at uncouthness. This all can, and does, lead to an erosion of the dialogue into something that’d never happen when people meet face to face, when they open their hearts, and when they share their thoughts.
We’d like us all to remember this—that no matter what sort of interface and no matter how great the distance, it’s still a conversation we’re engaging in. We hope we can approach all our conversations, digital and otherwise, with the respect and civility they deserve.
We’re committed to honoring our role as global citizens and communication leaders. And we very much invite you to join us.
The C4:
1. Advertisers have gained a reputation (not entirely undeservedly) for using our media leverage in the pursuit of dishonesty and a dumbing-down of the collective conversation.
2. Reputations can only be rehabilitated by action. It’s up to us to reform from within and to gain back any esteem we might have lost. We’re on it.
3. May we humbly submit, though, that we no longer command (if we ever did) the tenor of the media and the trajectory of societal discourse? The fact is, we’re all creators, and we all share responsibility for the integrity, or lack thereof, of the content we share.
4. We’re not saying cool it with the cat pics (you can haz cheezburger!), and we love a viral vid as much as anyone. We’re just saying that this global conversation is ongoing, and we can choose to make it constructive, or to let it become toxic to us all. We’re aiming for the former. How about you?
