27 September 2023

The danger of ever-shorter sound bites

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Bruce Kasanoff* recalls Carl Sagan’s prediction from the last century that carries an ominous ring of truth today.


In 1994 planetary scientist, Carl Sagan published an article in The Washington Post in which he revealed the following:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time, when we’re a service and information economy.

“When nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues.

“When people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority.

“When, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition.”

His 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World, contained a very similar passage.

Looking back 27 years, one might conclude that we are now paying the price for being too superficial for too long.

Sagan was tremendously uneasy with the notion of 30-second sound bites dominating the media then, only to be replaced by 10-second sound bites now.

Social media has made the situation even worse, where sound bites not only come from mainstream media, but also from millions of people who just make stuff up.

Sagan continued: “We’ve arranged a civilisation in which most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment and protecting the environment.

“Even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology.

“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.

“We might get away with it for a while, but eventually this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

We can’t reverse this decline by screaming louder or getting angrier.

As Sagan argued, we need to value science over superstition and to move past sound bites toward true substance.

Please think about that the next time you respond to a point of view with which you disagree.

*Bruce Kasanoff is the founder of The Journey, a newsletter for positive, uplifting and accomplished professionals. He is also an executive coach and social media ghostwriter for entrepreneurs. He can be contacted at kasanoff.com.

This article first appeared at kasanoff.com.

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