Do you feel like J.L. Gotrocks?

Ok, one of my favorite episodes of The Flintstones is where Fred fills in for look-alike and wealthy business tycoon, J.L. Gotrocks.  The episode has a famous scene where Fred is answering multiple phones frantically saying three lines – “Whose baby is that?”, “What’s your angle?” and “I’ll buy that.”  It was a classic scene that has been wonderously burned into my mind for more years than I care to state.

So why is that scene popping up in my head a lot more these days?  It’s certainly not because of “the answering of multiple phones” because I rarely use that device for communications.  What I am noticing these days is that my day is non-stop digital communications.  I probably send and receive close to 350+ emails, DM’s, tweets, FB emails, in a given day.  And I have a feeling that many of you are probably in the same boat.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the communication, networking, problem-solving, sharing, helping, brainstorming that it all brings.  It also brings the challenge of becoming all consuming in many ways.

I could look back on the early days of my career at the phone company when I used to go to “meetings” and spend an hour typing-printing-stuffing interoffice envelopes to send out a single message.  I remember 20 voicemails a day and actually having a phone on my desk that would ring.  Would I want to go back to that?  No way, but it often makes me wonder where we will be in 5 years extrapolating on the communication styles we have now.

Non-realtime communication messages do not stop when you sleep, go on vacation, attend a conference, or do one of those old fashion “meetings” – they just pool up behind the faucet waiting to spill out when you return.  I wonder where this will go.

• How will it scale when in many ways it doesn’t even scale now on an individual basis?
• What wonders will come along to change things yet again?
• Will we look back and laugh at this blog post in 5 years at the rediculously small number of 350+ as we brag about the 1000+ messages we consume and react to on a daily basis?

Do you feel like J.L. Gotrocks today?  What’s your plan for tomorrow?

July 17th, 2009 - Posted in social media | | 9 Comments