Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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Cameras as Identity Markers

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“If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?”

We should be interested in recent news from Japan about the crowds traveling southwest from Tokyo to Fujiyoshida, a town of 42,000 that offers good views of Mt. Fuji. Millions come every year, mostly for one reason: to get a picture of the famed peak from the town itself or an adjoining park. Their presence is not so different from the scores of photos friends send us or post affirming that they visited somewhere interesting. But, increasingly, the pictures seem like a surprise visitation from relatives who make it their habit to ignore the usual courtesies that Japanese hosts have so carefully ritualized.

Smartphones have given their users cameras that need a reason to exist. What better use than to turn them into identity markers that include a selfie and, ideally, a backdrop intended to provoke some envy. I recall previous older relatives being a bit more cautious about putting themselves in the picture. But now “selfitis” can wear others down. It is a kind of narcissism that is not so different from the Evil Queen’s search for reassurance of her worth in a mirror. A modern variant in a scenic backdrop may also carry a more detailed message: “I was here and you were not: I’m in the presence of a recognized icon, which confers jealousy and maybe prestige.” Getting the picture as a photo tourist spares a person from doing anything more than moving on to the next recognizable meme.

As for Mt. Fuji, “I saw this gorgeous photo on social media,” noted Julia Morrow from Ohio. “If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?”

Oh my. That is a level of shallowness that in prior times might have come with some shame. Ms. Morrow should consider the implications of her view.

Reports in the New York Times and elsewhere describe the frustration of the locals in the town who take a few pictures, and then apparently leave without visiting any of the merchants along its busy commercial street. The new tourist rule seems to be to go and capture an image that is some facsimile of what is commonly seen elsewhere. Better, too, if your face is in the shot.

What a weird and shallow form of tourism.

Look at photos of the Salle des États Gallery in the Louvre, which features the iconic Mona Lisa. Too many visitors are struggling to take a second-rate picture of an object that should be taken in with one’s own eyes. To many, the first-hand experience seems expendable, leading to an obvious question:  why not buy a good postcard of the da Vinci painting? If museum employees curate their galleries, it should be equally true that the rest of us should do a better job of curating the experiences we sometimes go to great expense to create.

I marvel at how our sense of place has changed.  In a public gallery a crowd often dominates and affirms the value of the spectacle itself. That is odd, because we were never meant to see the Grand Canyon or the rugged Pacific coastline only from Seat 14a on a tourist bus. A photo may indeed represent a location we may never get to fully inhabit in person. But it is yet another case of asking too much of a small-capacity medium to represent the 360-degree experience of a place in its natural state. If it means anything, living life to the fullest should include engaging all of the senses.

Sometimes a picture is just a picture. But the self-curated photograph that suggests that “I’m here and I matter” is perhaps assuaging feelings of invisibility in a world with too many ingenious ways to ignore others. We should want more.

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The Fraught Task of a Commencement Speaker

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , ,

The trappings of commencement are meant to lift the spirits, but it is now harder to know what to say to a group of mariners setting out on unusually stormy seas.

Universities and their constituents have been wrung through the wringer this year. It seems like everyone from the President to their funding sources have weighed in on their supposed shortcomings: some, such as the tradition of favoring diversity goals, are totally fictitious, others, such as high fees to attend, are true. In this fractious environment what can an invited speaker say to those about to leave the protected shores of academia for the stormy economy that awaits? In better years  graduates who gathered in front of Old Main were giddy with high expectations, if not always prepared to hear the solemn words of a somebody at least one generation removed.

Lately, a college degree seems less of an achievement than a document testifying to endurance. And those young grads are obviously none too pleased with their country and the diminished job prospects in many fields that they will be inheriting. Recent reports of vocal “boos” from graduates being addressed by speakers from the tech world are a reminder that what should be a celebration now sometimes resembles a hostile crowd at a political rally. The threat of A.I. performing jobs in many industries is real for these graduates, who might have reasonably expected a degree of protection from the culture.*

Speeches are my business. And while the trappings of commencement and its music are meant to lift the spirits, it is now harder to find the right thoughts to communicate to a group about to step into the unknowns of work and life.

The most durable model for these speeches combined a sense of celebration with old-timey jeremiads about becoming too complacent too soon. The classic commencement speech almost always took the form of a secular sermon, even when the message was simply to hold on to the ideals and enthusiasms that are the birthright of the young. The writer Susan Sontag cautioned students at Wellesley to become students for life.  I like here writerly way of putting it: “Don’t move to the mental slums.”

Now, it is less apparent that these new graduates want to hear more from the generation that they believe—with some justification—has put the country in its present disarray.

The best advice to a speaker that I can give is to be brief, and to combine any warnings with a sense of positivity.  There goals are not mutually exclusive. Graduates should be urged to joyfully use the intellectual tools that they have acquired. They will need to prove their worth as critical thinkers and communicators. In my own case, stating this was easy. Given the Chairperson’s privilege of speaking to our communication majors in a smaller ceremony, I added a reminder that can apply to many fields.

Communication is not done with any of us. It will have its way with us for the remainder of our days. This isn’t a subject you learn and then move on. There’s rarely such a thing as perfecting a communication skill. . . For the rest of our lives we have no choice but to be students of the arts of working with others, ready for the next opportunity to make friends out of strangers and take the toxicity out of relationships.

In short, make this moment the start of using the intellectual tools and social intelligence you have acquired.

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*A music technologist addressing students at a commencement in Tennessee this spring offered one of the worst comments I have heard from a speaker: “The things you learned in your first year here may already be obsolete.”  Everyone at that institution should have been offended, since it suggests the presumption of a trade-school approach to a subject that is thousands of years old. Surely Tennessee’s program did more than explain how to use an outdated edition of some studio software. He was rightly booed.