It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. -Charles Darwin
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change -Albert Einstein
Sage advice from both Darwin and Einstein and boy did John Lennon get it right when he said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Well did life ever happen to us this year! And how about all those plans that went on hold or just went??? So, we stop, refocus, react accordingly and re-direct our attention to an unexpected life crisis. Whether it’s the pandemic, a personal tragedy, job change or just new technology, it inevitably means change. Generally, we do not like change.
Technological change has revolutionized our world in an incredibly short time. Canadian thinker, author, mass media guru Marshall McLuhan predicted the development of the internet and the creation of a global village back in the mid 60’s as he pondered the effects of electronic media on society. As those who study mass media know, his famous quote “the medium is the message” is more relevant today than ever.
While the internet and social media have fast-forwarded the creation of McLuhan’s Global Village”, probably even beyond his at-the-time-considered-wild predictions, the digital age has also enabled the propagation of misinformation that poses a huge threat to democracies based on an enlightened electorate.
It’s critical to know your medium, the source of your information. Our health and welfare, our very lives depend on it. The problem is we can all be citizen journalists today, capturing everything from the novel and comical to natural disasters, violence and social unrest on our i-phones and tweet it out instantaneously…but what about the facts? Context? Objectivity?
Journalism students throw up their hands in despair, as the industry struggles through this continual technological metamorphosis. Jobs in traditional media are disappearing. Trust in all media is wavering. You only have to look at the proliferation of questionable news sources online and the anchors-come-rival-commentators south of the border, polarizing public opinion. We tell our students there will always be a need and I hope, demand, for good journalism, where facts are checked, context explained and all sides of the story told fairly and accurately.
Socrates said, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” That’s what’s happening in journalism schools and must happen in every aspect of society. It’s about embracing disruption, a tough lesson I learned more than a decade ago.
A career as I had known it for more than three decades had ended. When I shared my despair with friend John Ellison, the “Some Kinda Wonderful” recording artist and very spiritual man, he told me, “when things like that happen, I just smile and say Lord, what have you got for me now?”
That career just moved into a new chapter. I eventually found that serenity to accept the thing I couldn’t change that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about, and I’m still working on the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. They are words for all of us to consider as we face unprecedented change and disruption in our world today.
Technology will continue to react to and drive change as the flow of information extends over the multiple platforms McLuhan referred to as the medium that was the message. A lot has changed. Today it’s the source of your information, the story teller who is shaping the message, whatever the medium. Check your sources. Know them.
Trust in sources will help guide us through change during the search for solutions to the world’s problems, like a vaccine and ways to enhance the human experience. We must simply move on, react to life events with a sense of hope and confidence built on that trust.
Country singer Jimmy Dean put it this way: “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.“ Then, there’s Martha Stewart, who insists, “the more you adapt, the more interesting you are.” Then I would like to think, Martha, that I along with many of us in this Global Village have become, at the very least, a little more interesting.
Connie Smith is a free-lance journalist and part-time professor at Mohawk College. She wishes the story tellers at the Hamilton Spectator well, adapting to their new home.