Who Is Listening

Does it matter whether someone is listening now or ever? ThinkingOutLoud.DonaldNoyes.20120912 Revisited.20130516

While reviewing some old magazines, particularly paying attention to how much or little insight and foresight its articles and advertisements reflected, I was left with impression, given the present environment, that only a few of the examples reflected clear and practical approaches to the addressed topic or concern. It is as if the writers and advertizers were paying more attention to who would listen instead of what important thing they were trying to convey. The most interesting of ads and articles were those which addressed relevant issues and promising technologies. A particular issue of Byte Magazine (May 1994) triggered this thinking piece.

Is the thing to be said focused on real concerns and issues, or is it targeted at more short-term and transient matters? Judge for yourself, when looking at the newspapers, magazines, video media and the internet. Who are its listeners, and what are the agendas and aims of the proclaimers?

This series of ThinkingOutLoud pages is presented with the aim of discovery and investigation of possibilities and potentialities of the human spirit. They are intended to expose a snapshot of what thoughts are crossing the thought-plane of mindfulness. Some are abstract, others light and uncertain, and some are reflective. Whatever, whereever and however a mind may wander and wonder, these are the topics of such thinking. WhoIsListening? Is this as important as what is said? Perhaps. Sometimes thoughts strike a present or future resonance in the minds of those who hear them, other times, there is a delay of perception or a triggering realization of the significance of past thinking (which is what ThinkingOutLoud becomes).

Sometimes we reflect on what we have done or said in the past and are stricken with amazement at what presence or absence of significance our thoughts of the past included. Do you hear me? Do you have this pattern?

I'd bet that this impression can only form with some distance to the article. Now you know which of the technologies worked out and which did not - and more importantly you know why. At the time of publishing this is much less obvious - if determinable at all.

When looking at past technological developments, you observe that successful strategies have patterns. While enterprises use abstrations and projections, theories and development strategies, together with scheduling what future products and services they may provide, to succeeed, they must concentrate on the intersection of human want and human needs with practical possibilies. This can be done in the present by viewing the connection and separation of relevant factors from a high altitude, taking into account trends and directions present developments may take and the proximity and relationship of those being most likely to shape or influence a strategy's success or failure. Wise choices are made from both the obvious and the things on the margins or not in vogue.

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