Editor’s note: In addition to following tech developments, our author is a musical composer (Juilliard-trained). He has provided a musical composition for you to listen to while reading this column. This piece is called “Things are Getting Faster.”
I learned recently that the Appalachian Mountains were once as tall as the Himalayas but eroded to their current height long before the ice age. Look it up https://www.britannica.com/science/orogeny
Technology is today’s erosion, shaving the height off mountains that stood in the way of quick and effective communication. Technology maintains our relationships in ways that would not have been imaginable just a few decades ago. But today’s erosion is happening much, much faster that the shaving down of the Appalachians.
We take for granted our personal computers, which seem to have been around forever. Still, the Encyclopedia Britannica says that the personal computer industry truly began in 1977, with the introduction of three preassembled mass-produced personal computers: the Apple II, the Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Commodore Business Machines Personal Electronic Transactor (PET).
It took only 30 years to get from the Radio Shack TRS-80 to the first iPhone! Since then, seventeen years have produced significant new advances every year. We have become addicted to smartphones. There are currently 6.84 billion smartphones globally, and 1.46 billion of them are Apple. It took 300 million years to shrink our East Coast mountain ranges and only 30 years for personal computers to evolve into smartphones. Look how far these smartphones have evolved in the last seventeen years.
Have you noticed that we first began talking about AI about a year and a half ago, in the spring of 2023? Now, almost every company and every app claims to have AI embedded.
This is an unprecedented speed of adoption. The planet has roughly eight billion people and seven billion smartphones! And 100 percent of them will shortly have AI embedded into their operating systems. How long will it take to thoroughly transform how we communicate, create, maintain, and end relationships? This relationship tech is hurtling toward us far too rapidly for us to duck and cover.
It is incredibly seductive to be almost anywhere on the planet and still be in touch with nearly everyone worldwide. Of course, there is a downside to that. It’s hard to get away. Your vacation can easily be interrupted by a call from your boss who just couldn’t wait until you get home. And friends and family members can call at any time day or night. I often leave my phone in my car when meeting people for lunch so I can concentrate on the conversation.
Our communication superpowers are about to become even more impressive. It is time to develop personal communication hygiene habits, just like you developed backup plans for your computers and devices. Our new and ever-evolving communication superpowers need to be both managed and exploited. Here are a few suggestions:
1) Life is more complicated and fluid than ever before; plans and commitments change frequently. Â You need to confirm appointments either the day before or the day of. It is quick and easy to do and will save you a lot of grief.
2) Because life has become more complicated and fluid, you also need to manage expectations in relationships. You need to send notices if you cannot keep appointments or if the services you promised will not be delivered on time. People get much less upset if they are alerted in advance. You may also want to send an alert if services will be finished earlier than expected. Soon, AI will likely play a role in your relationship management. AI presumably will know your schedule because it will have created your calendar. Soon, we should be able to delegate relationship management to an AI program. When AI notices that previous milestones, on which future ones depend, are late, it will send out warnings, or at least prompt you to. It should take a lot less effort then to be respectful to others with AI helping you.
3) Previously, it was thought that new relationships had to begin in person. I know many people who have worked together for years but have never met in person. When there are many ways to teleconference, what exactly does in-person mean now? I am not advocating skipping in-person meetings—they are definitely better for building relationships—but I am recommending that they are not always possible or absolutely necessary.
4) Remember, the tendency to multitask can hinder authentic communication. You may be writing to people while doing other things. They can tell. Even though you may want to spend less time communicating with some people, the relationship may require you to give them your complete attention at times.
5) Try to be flexible enough to deal with other people’s communication preferences, and yes, they will be changing, perhaps radically and immediately.
6) You must learn to adopt new tools quickly and be open to their current state. User interfaces are changing swiftly. You should fire up your apps in advance of a critical conversation to ensure they still work the way you think they do.
In the 1970’s, large computer companies could not imagine the future of personal computers—can you believe now that IBM sold off its personal computer division? None of the phone companies anticipated smartphones. Although the whole world is now talking about AI and its current large language model configuration, it is not even two years old yet.
Fantastic advances are also about to occur in telemedicine and many other fields. Unfortunately, there will also be great potential for manipulation, even more significant than in social media. The government industrial complex is careening down the side of a mountain steeper than Mount Everest.
We used to think mountains were there forever. How relationships were conducted seemed relatively standard and unchanging. Relationship tech is changing the game very quickly. Pay attention!
