Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2013. The picture of everyday technology (WhatsApp, Facebook birthday reminders, LinkedIn as a job-hunting tool) and the reference to “the crisis” reflect Spain in 2013.
Albert Einstein once said: “I fear the day when technology overtakes our humanity, because the world will have a generation of idiots.” That day has come, and it has brought two major changes. The first is in the way we do business and deal with one another professionally: these days many people give more importance to their network of LinkedIn contacts than to their real professional contacts. As for the second, it isn’t that the way we relate to one another in our personal and social lives has changed. It has simply been destroyed.
All you have to do is walk into a restaurant and watch a few couples with all the passion of two penguins, exchanging more words on Facebook than face to face. Or groups of friends who meet for coffee, each of them there in body while their mind is busy with their device. The result would be the same if they had arranged to meet for a cyber-coffee on Facebook.
How has technological progress changed us?
Technological progress has taken us back to a more primitive age.
In the past, if the person you were talking to in a business meeting or a personal conversation got distracted and stopped paying attention, it was considered extremely bad manners. Today it seems normal to talk to someone while they check their email or send a WhatsApp message to someone else. Some people are even so polite that they say “Go on, go on, I’m listening…” while fiddling with their phone. When I’m in a business meeting and find myself in that situation, I usually point out politely that “unless you put the phone down and give me your full attention, it’s been a pleasure, but goodbye”, because afterwards come the “you never told me that…” and the “that’s not what we agreed”, all because one of the two people in the room wasn’t listening to the other.
The end of the personal touch
If you want to fire someone, you can now do it by text message, Facebook or WhatsApp. In some companies, employees who had been there since before the first mobile phone appeared have been rewarded for more than 30 years of service with dismissal by text. Why should the boss go through the ordeal of looking in the eye someone who helped build the company from the ground up? It is also easier to make excuses for not turning up to an appointment or for arriving late. If you don’t want to meet someone, all you have to do is send a message saying: “Something’s come up and I can’t make it.” You used to have to exercise your mind to come up with a good excuse. Not any more.
The way we send birthday wishes has changed
Remember the days when, on your birthday, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, and people even called to invite you for coffee and surprised you with presents? None of that is necessary any more thanks to Facebook, which tells all your friends it’s your birthday and spares them the personal touch. Now a single line on Facebook will do. There are two kinds of birthday message: 1. The personalised one, which usually goes “Happy birthday, have a wonderful day and many happy returns.” 2. The stock phrase lifted from some quote that has been doing the rounds online for 4 years, but is usually nice.
Please, if you are looking for a job, leave LinkedIn and go and look for a job
LinkedIn is a shop window for professionals that supposedly connects companies with professionals. And yes, it does, but my friend, if you are looking for work, start building relationships in person, because LinkedIn is not going to open the doors to a job for you. This is where someone says, “Well, I found a job thanks to LinkedIn,” to which I reply that I know someone who got out of the crisis by playing the Bonoloto (a Spanish lottery).
In short: assuming technology has stripped us of many essential human values, and assuming that, as Albert Einstein said, we have become idiots, then… in a world of idiots, where an online network of contacts has more apparent value, the winner will be whoever stops behaving like an idiot and acts like an intelligent person, building a real, personal network of contacts.
And I’ll end by saying that having Warren Buffett or Carlos Slim in your LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook network isn’t worth a thousandth of the value and usefulness of personally knowing a section manager at a company’s provincial office who doesn’t even use the internet.
As for businesses, one thing is clear: continuing to treat your customers in a human way is what will allow small businesses to compete with large companies.
Further reading
- 9 simple, extraordinary things to say to people every day
- 7 tech industries with a future
- 18 business lessons you’ll learn sooner or later
Featured image: Matt Brown from London, England, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
