Love the “Open Debate” on the last page of the June issue of Fast Company magazine between Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi and Brian Collins of Ogilvy & Mather: Lot of take-aways and food for thought. Some of my favorites:
Roberts:
“Screens are the campfire storytellers of today.”
“We’ve moved into the Age of Paradox—no more either/or, no more black/white. It’s all and/and.
Collins:
“Screens may be hypnotizing, but design is humanizing.”
“Ubiquity destroys intensity.”
The debate itself is the playfulness of Le‘ale‘a in action, especially conveyed by the pictures of these two gentlemen in the print issue (Here’s the link if you are a subscriber, otherwise you’ll have to wait for it to hit the online archives, or grab the magazine at your nearest newsstand.)
“Resolved: The most powerful way to touch people is through screens.” is the byline of the article, but I beg to differ” I think Collins won the debate.
The Managing with Aloha question is, what about all the people in the world (the vast majority) who have no access to the screens they are talking about?
They talk about screens as though you knew exactly what they’re talking about. I am assuming they mean tv screens?
My take on it was that they were talking about all kinds of screens and monitors Dave – so they include your laptop and pc monitors, your cellphone and blackberry monitors, and now the new iPod video monitors. To my way of thinking, the annoyances are growing…
Screens are an addition, not a replacement for human interaction. There is nothing so annoying as trying to communicate effectively to a group with e-mail or even by phone. Nothing beats a face to face meeting or a public speech. Technology is an inferior substitute. How many boring Powerpoint slides have you sat through?
All righty then, I’m with Collins, bring on the roses! Screens are the fire starter, the flint striking the rock. I like that about them. Fire is real experiences.
Mantras and ScreenSaver Magic
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is to say ‘I don’t want to.’”—Lao Tzu The quote above is the one that currently scrolls across my computer screen when it’s on power-save mode, waiting for me