Does Mini-Bite Information Delivery Cause Mini-Bite Thinking?
By Roberta Rosenberg on Feb 4, 2007 in Occasional Rantings
I’ve been thinking about this since reading a post on Tom Chandler’s The Copywriter Underground where he riffs on this post, Honey, I shrunk the culture from Nicolas Carr’s blog, Rough Type who riffed on this piece from O’Reilly Radar … with me so far?
The basic question - Does short-form content chunking over time cause short-form intelligence? Are we creating a nation of short-attention span theatre goers who won’t have the patience or even ability to write or think in the long form?
Information-chunking, a technique I recommend when writing copy, is generally a good thing. Break down big tasks or ideas into smaller, easier-to-consider bites. It’s a great way to begin a new project or learn a big new idea more quickly.
But what about the sheer joy of learning? Wrestling with the big ideas for the sheer challenge? Forcing yourself to move slowly through literary prose so beautifully crafted and delicate that you want to read it 10 times just to say the words out loud?
Is the Web 2.0 information user/gatherer slowing losing the
ability to grasp concepts and ideas that don’t easily lend themselves
to digestible little tidbits?
I’ve been a Newsweek reader since I was a teenager. Over time
I’ve watched the number of pages shrink but it hasn’t seemed terribly dramatic until now. This week my issue was noticeably thin. No one reads a weekly
news magazine for breaking news, but what struck me was that the
magazine can’t attract the ad dollars for folks who actually want the week’s
news and trends analyzed — and are willing to pay for it!
That is telling and depressing to me. As our society grows more
fragmented (Super Bowl Sunday aside, one of the last still vibrant
examples of the civic town square) and our technology grows more
complex, I’d think we’d need a citizen base who can think, analyze in
the long form.
Or maybe I’m just nuts and need to relax more.
But bear with me for a second and consider the concept of "freedom"
as a political construct and a civic good and how it has been promoted
over time:
The Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s masterpiece of art, conviction, and passion (1776)
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of
nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
People Got To Be Free (by
Rascals, Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati), an old-fashioned protest
song from the 1960s. (Less poetic than Jefferson, but hey, you can
dance to it and it uses words.)
All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free
Listen, please listen, that’s the way it should be
Peace in the valley, people got to be free
And my Web 2.0 version?
Freedom. Good.
This is progress? I’m no Luddite, but I sometimes worry that a society that prefers to be spoon-fed its information in pre-digested little bites with pictures will lose the ability to wield a knife and fork when it’s time to cut into the tougher, more complex issues. (And won’t be able to appreciate my meaty metaphor because they’ll stop at the smiley face picture :=)
Do I worry too much?
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Michel Fortin | Feb 4, 2007 | Reply
Great post!
I don’t think that chunking is the mark of a lazy intelligence.
I believe it’s due in part to the overwhelming insurgence of marketing messages and in interruption marketing, coupled with the rise of media and divergence into varying formats — namely, with the Internet.
Because of its conversational nature and multifarious choices (in messages, applications, and formats), today the Internet interrupts the reader in more ways than conventional media.
But then, it’s a chicken-egg dilemma.
Did the media create an ADD pandemic? Or are we becoming more attention-deficient, pushing for the need for chunking? I think it’s accumulative on both fronts — as one feeds the other.
In today’s video-game, fax-email-microwave world, we are not only catering to attention deficiency. We are also seeding it, feeding it and serving it, making it grow and demand for more.
The lines that used to separate the four basic personality styles, defined by psychologists (e.g., analyticals, drivers, amiables and expressives), were once gray. They are based on an individual’s level of responsiveness and assertiveness.
Those lines were around since 400 B.C., when Hippocrates, in “Air, Water And Places,” dubbed these personality types as Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Melancholic.
But what we’re seeing is akin to a science experiment: the more we bombard a hungry crowd with different types of food, the more the crowd separates into groups of people who prefer one type of food over another.
Similarly, as we bombard society with more media, more messages and more choices (giving them more control than ever before), those gray lines are getting darker and darker, it seems.
So chunking serves two of these types (the low responsives, namely the driver and analytical types). Therefore, 50% of the population are chunk-oriented, while the other 50% are not and perfer long-form.
That’s why, in my estimation, chunking should be an alternative — not a replacement. In fact, offering chunks is not the real phenomenon occurring, here. It’s offering choices. As a result, what we are seeing is a growing polarization, and a growth in much more distinct groups of people who prefer one type over another.
Copywriting Maven | Feb 4, 2007 | Reply
Hi Michel, I wouldn’t disagree with your analysis except how, from a marketing perspective, do we define and reach the groups … and are there demographic/psychographic data we can use? For example, we know that long-form can be more effective with seniors in part because they have more time to spend with a marketing message AND they’re accustomed to the long form. But I don’t think all “short-form” devotees are young.
Perhaps we’re so deluged with messages that the best we can do is skim the short-form and save the long-form for reading time in the bathroom :=)
Michel Fortin | Feb 5, 2007 | Reply
And I’m sure not all more mature devotees are long-form enthusiasts, either.
The answer is, “give ‘em what they want.” For one, you need to know who you’re writing to. I imagine research, learning about the demographics, psychographics, and what Forrester Research calls “Technographics,” solves a part of that question.
But on another level, you let them make those choices.
In my report, “The Death of The Salesletter,” I talk about technology allowing the reader to specifically choose what format they prefer — long or short, video or written, factual or emotional, etc.
Agreed, we’re not there yet. But we’re much better off today, and have the tools and data to be a lot more targeted with our copy.
Drew McLellan | Feb 5, 2007 | Reply
Can you break that post up for me?:)
I think the answer to your question is it depends.
For marketing materials — brochures, blogs, web, DM pieces, chunking makes sense. Today’s buyers want to cut to the chase.
But I do believe we need to follow up with additional pieces that provide more detail and description.
I guess I think of it as a 1-2 punch.
Get their interest with the short stuff and let the details make the sale.
Drew