Making It Happen

The past five years have been a major pain in the butt. There is, of course, a better word to use, but we still have regulations that limit our full freedom of speech. Not a bad thing, just a thing.

I think we need to move the argument away from print dying and changing, and realize that communications as a whole has been under attack. The attack is not going to provide defeat of the medium, but we need to bring the full pressures of the industry to bear for self/internal and exterior change—profit-based change—and reduced cost-based change.

Allowing an “old” form of communication to be replaced—or perhaps, the better word is substituted—by a new, very similar form is the goal; not the destruction of any one media. This attack has come from the fifth column, the insiders of the industry who see a new vision. The difference is, this group did not use clandestine tactics as a traditional internal, fifth-column-driven effort would have. Instead, its members came right out front and said it: CHANGE, we will make it happen, we need to make it happen.

It was how they did it that perhaps confused many. I agree that there is a new view of the field of communications and that the visionaries out there decided that to affect change, they did not need to replace or splinter the current communications model...they needed to kill it. Based on the following comment, I don’t think you can kill anything that has worth, all you can do is splinter the field and hope for the best.

Recently, the technology columnist for the New York Times provided via his column an observation that hit home. And home could be in the United States or in Malaysia; in fact, it does not matter where in the world you are.