A while back I was talking with a friend. He said that it would be really cool if we actually developed working transporters, like in Star Trek where we could beam from one place to another instantly.
I thought about it for a bit, and the more I thought about it the more that I realized that might solve the traffic jams on the freeway, but we’d be more harried than ever. You actually say stuff like, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. I have another meeting in 7 seconds.”
We’d be constantly watching the clock. Sure, you might get in more meetings each day, but you’d be more transactional than ever…less human.
Let’s face it, all these communication tools haven’t gotten us closer together at all, they’ve trained us like lab rats to treat each other as NPCs in our game of business.
I mean, I bet right now if I looked at your email inbox I’d see a large number of unopened emails. Now before you think I’m attacking you, I deal with that too. Or maybe you’ve achieved that magical Zero inbox…ah, the stuff of legend. But if you have, that means that you’ve deleted thousands of “do you have a quick 15 minutes” emails…or Unsubscribed to countless things that you never subscribed to in the first place.
So, congratulations everyone (and once again, I point the finger at me too), we’ve all absolutely ruined this great communication medium. Why, because we abandoned just treating people like we would want to be treated.
And now, we’re doing it with AI too. I’m not against AI at all, but I have to laugh as LinkedIn feels less and less personal as it fills up with more and more AI engagement bots asking ridiculously over-involved questions to people that we don’t care about, in order to expand our reach.
The future will belong to those who use AI, yes. But maybe not in the way we think. Maybe, just maybe in the middle of things moving in data streams at lightspeed, we can all slow down and treat each other like we all matter, even if that person isn’t the next big contract.
