Fast and Upside Down

First published on the Hyro blog 29 Jan 2009. Here's me purchasing a petard with a piece on concise and single-minded communication. Yes, one of my very next posts was a rambling epic braindump.

It strikes me that the ‘reverse pyramid’ principle of web copywriting is an excellent metaphor for the world we now live and work in. The ‘reverse pyramid’ turns the orthodox narrative structure upside down. The punchline comes first. Draw the conclusion, then build the case. 

The reason behind this principle: people are less able to read large amounts of text on a screen versus a book or magazine. You need to make your point immediately, and hope that it’s compelling enough to keep some of your audience reading.

But I think this principle goes beyond web copywriting – it’s an insight to something pervasive in the digital world, and into the way the digital generation behaves.
It’s often said that our attention span is shrinking, that young people can absorb less information, and are less capable of understanding complex concepts. The implication; people are dumber than they used to be, especially ‘young people’.
But is this what’s really happening? From where I stand, the generation which has grown up on the internet is getting smarter, and their ability to quickly grasp complex things is increasing.

‘Quickly’ is the key word here – the digital world is fast, and getting faster. Its inhabitants realize that, in the course of a day, they will be exposed to much more information than they can possibly absorb. Their minds have been trained to rapidly process snippets of information and decide what to ignore, and what to persist with.

So, our attention span may appear to be shrinking, but it’s not because we’re losing the ability to concentrate, it’s because we’re learning the ability to rapidly and consciously decide which information is useful, and which information is not – and we’re doing so almost every waking moment of our lives. The kids are alright – their brains haven’t been dulled by years of internet and video games, they’ve been sharpened.

Think about this the next time you stand up to address a room full of people with mobile phones and laptops. The first thing you say will have to both encapsulate your purpose, and convince your audience that it’s worthwhile to keep listening. Same goes for just about every interaction in your professional life – the interactions you conduct personally, and those you engineer via digital channels on behalf of your brand or business.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call me. But make it fast. And upside down.
Next week – I expose the dangers of Binge Thinking
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BTW, there was no post on 'Binge Thinking'. I was having a subtle dig at a pointless gabfest of a management conference. Binge Drinking was a tabloid preoccupation at the time, hence the pun.

Here's one of the comments on the original post. I reproduce it because the link's a good one, and on topic.

Tim Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Nicholas Carr’s article from last year “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” deals with this and related topics in detail.
Among other things, Nick claims that there is an implicit trade-off between breadth and depth of knowledge taking place - we are skimming more, but reading in detail very little.http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
-Tim