Uninfectious enthusiasm
The Spring 2013 issue of IEEE Technology in Society Magazine has Alexander Hayes writing about Google Glasses and other wearable technology that he says "is set to revolutionize the manner in which we interact with each other".
Putting yet another revolution aside for a moment, I vaguely recall reading some advice to the effect that writing fiction in the second person is unlikely to succeed. Reading the first few paragraphs of Hayes' article, I found that the same is probably true of non-fiction, and experienced the reason why: addressing someone in the second person makes risky presumptions about what that person thinks.
When Hayes asserts that "you [i.e., me] may agree that [Hayes' experience] is not dissimilar to your current relationship with this disruptive technology," he immediately seems hopelessly incorrect: I think my relationship with mobile phones is very little like his. (Daniel Kahneman, whose work I wrote about in my last entry, has a similar habit, though he usually at least qualifies his second-person assertions with "if you are like most people..." and some empirical research to back this up. And, when it comes to Kahneman's studies, I probably really am like most people.)
Apart from advice on writing, Hayes' article gave me cause to think about two things: the temptation for enthusiasts to project their enthusiasm onto other people, and the distinction between frequent communication and good communication.
When I'm grooving along to the gothic metal and industrial music that I love, for example, it's easy to forget that not everyone appreciates such grim and gloomy noise. I suppose that computer enthusiasts feel the same way: the latest gadget seems so exciting, and the revolution so palpable, how could anyone be blasé about it?
Hayes certainly seems to be a frequent communicator, to go by his own description of is mobile phone use, yet the opening paragraphs of his article completely mis-identified this reader. Of course Hayes had no way of knowing that I was going to be reading his article, but I was nonetheless reminded of the argument made in Susan Cain's recent book Quiet that talking a lot isn't the same as achieving a lot.
Yet excitement and noise attracts far more attention than sober reflection and quality time. More charitable commentators might describe such noisy excitement as "infectious enthusiasm", but I wonder if it only infects those who already have said enthusiasm.
