Throughout my life I have been involved in media in one form or another. Having had the opportunity to experience professionally both sides of the fence, from holding the mike to being on the business end of one, I still find myself in awe when it comes to the impact that our communication mediums have on the depth of discourse in today’s society.

As a journalist you’re on a never ending quest for the right sound byte or words to effectively communicate the truth of a story in a certain amount of time. On the flip side, you do your best to make your the ideas as clear and concise as possible so that journalists latch on to the right message because in the end you know they have only 30 seconds for you in the next broadcast.

Unfortunately sometimes an idea can’t be crunched down to 30 seconds or even to 5 minutes; you need to explain it because it’s new or outside conventional thinking. But you can’t take the time to explain because if you do nobody will listen, you lose the attention of the audience… and when that happens the advertising revenue that allows media to exist is negatively impacted and can affect their capacity to communicate your message.

Some would say that digital channels change this reality but I would argue that they perpetuate it. Blogs postings have to be short, video clips on YouTube are short, most podcasts’ are short and we text our thoughts in 140 character chunks.

So we are caught in an attention span and media consumption paradox that sometimes limits the depth of thought and advancement of ideas that could positively change our world. But is it in fact a paradox or a reflection of who we are?

I’ll stop now, for obvious reasons…