Swoosh

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Communication is the process by which we bring the inside out.  It is the process through which we interpret the nature of the external.  Communication is the palette with which we paint the nature of our reality.  That composition is ancient and modern and made uniquely complex by the pervasiveness of contemporary media.  That complexity was much in evidence in Tiger Woods' address this morning.

The over-riding dialectic placed the personal and the private in tension with the professional and the public.  Here is a man who can, because of his public and professional persona, walk nowhere unnoticed.  Yet, here too is a man who seems to desire a life at least as private as yours or mine.  The chasm appears impossible to span.

Adding to the complexity is the extent to which communication acts enabled the crisis.  It was the immense wealth and celebrity made possible by the media that deafened Woods to the inner voice of the better man, that convinced him that the rules that bind our lives did not constrain his behavior.  A life without boundaries seemed to propel Woods into a surreal existence in which both his blessings and his banes bloomed to absurd proportions.

The protagonists in ancient Greek drama needed only to play out their hubris before the gods.  Tiger has had the public, via the media, with which to contend.  The same media that had sung him to heights of glory, now sought to Tweet him down; to judge the man according to the god-ling they had created.

Tiger’s own behavior, personal and professional – in the clear light of hindsight – gave evidence that the public god and the private man were coming unglued.  Excess is most often the blustering trapping of raging uncertainty.  And then came the night in November when tragedy and comedy conspired to shatter the dualistic illusion – leaving both the public and the man with no clear notion of who this character, this Tiger, was.

The media abhor a vacuum, and so turned their attention elsewhere. That is until today, when the savaged Prince returned, perhaps to reclaim the tarnished throne of Denmark.  The drums rolled, the trumpets blared; and in walked a very ordinary man.  He seemed a man who had awakened from a dream – a dream both wonderful and terrible.  He seemed a man resolved to seek a path to balance, normalcy and reality.  That he is not yet there was evidenced in his futile plea for privacy, for the media to leave his family alone: if you choose to swim with sharks, they must be fed.  Still, I am encouraged by his intention to return to the Buddhist teachings of his youth.  Of all the world’s great faiths, that is the one most firmly committed to the principles of harmony and balance.  I wish him well on his journey.
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One Web Doesn't "Fit All"

There is an interesting story in today's NY Times. The headline is: Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Grass Roots.

Here is the link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/policy/15ground.html?th&emc=th

I am surprised that they seem surprised. The author, Jeff Zeleny, appears to have made a classic mistake in assuming that if you pour a message into the "right" media container it will have the same effect as it had the last time you poured a message into that container. No, it doesn't really happen that way. The negotiation that goes on between our communication needs and the technologies that meet those needs is dynamic on all levels. The message, the medium, and the individuals who use the medium to encounter the message, the transformation of the message by all of the preceding, and behaviors resulting from the on-going negotiation - those are all elements in a dynamic process.

President Obama's digital election campaign made significant use of electronic resources to revitalize the PPPE [a Previously Passive Portion of the Electorate :-)] that shared both his agenda and his technology. My guess is that much of the PPPE is under 30, certainly under 40. Healthcare is a hot button issue for FFOFs [Fearful Folks Over Fifty] who, largely, do not "techno-verb": blog, tweet, Facebook or Google. Sure, that is changing, but not to the extent that we can expect the communication strategies that work for the PPPE to be equally effective the FFOFs.

The PPPE still feel immortal. They don't get sick. They want their "healthcare" to deal with accidents - car, bike, skateboard, tri-athletic, whatever. They will not be the important stakeholders in this issue - except to the extent that their lack of attention might make things more difficult for their parents who tend to be FFOFs.

As Mr. Zeleny does point out in his article, to leverage the support of the FFOFs who are concerned about healthcare, the Obama administration is going to have to address the negotiation differently, perhaps starting with a new container.