Lifebombing is my new favourite hobby. What is lifebombing? Well, I’ve hijacked the term from “photobombing”, where someone other than the intended subject in a photograph jumps into the frame to intrude on the shot.
As a matter of personal protest, I have started to invade the digital trance of my colleagues and friends by stepping into their paths as they trudge forward, face down, glued to their phones or tablets, completely unaware that my large frame was blocking their onward motion. They have to pause. “Hey,” I say, “you’ve been life-bombed.”
The average person in the UK checks their phone more than 100 times a day; the most-frequent users check their devices as much as every seven seconds!
People are digitised and desensitised to the real life washing around them. We are wired up, to the detriment of real engagement, enjoyment and empowerment.
I am not a curmudgeon. New tech is exciting, useful and productive and I believe it has helped business and society take giant strides forward.
The digital age has given us great efficiencies. Ideas and information go from concept to handheld in the blink of an eye.
But in our rapidly engrossing cybertrance we are sacrificing reading a book or newspaper and paying attention to slower versions of everyday life, including the most important ones: interacting eye-to-eye, face-to-face with the person in front of us, and the opportunity to exchange views, opinions, and perspectives.
Consider the detriment of this to our human existence, our community and certainly to what we do every day for a living.
In the workplace, I often notice how many of us struggle to express a point coherently without the back-up of numbers and graphics. It seems far easier for many to deploy data, infographics, video and charts. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But is it? How do you expand a business if people can’t talk to each other, express themselves, read personalities and demeanour, and offer different perspectives?
One of the benefits of our cyberworld is that the possession of information is no longer a competitive advantage. Access to information is universal. The real magic, the really important thing, is what you do with the information. And that requires judgment, the sum of the knowledge derived from all of our real-life interactions, our personal learning store.
Assessing character and judgment is critical to what we do – in life and in business. The fact that people are losing the ability to do this is a concern. It should be a concern to all of us. Digital noise poses a threat to the evolution of our judgment, that powerful force comprised of all the visual, emotional and subliminal signals that come from repeat, direct first-person human interaction.
Embrace and use technology, but make certain that it is not an invasion when it should be an improvement. Real life is not a distraction, and the judgment it nurtures is a powerful personal and business asset. Do your friends a favour – go lifebomb someone today!
Ric Lewis is chief executive of Tristan Capital Partners
