The 2020 Flush-List

In about 45 days (as I write this) we get to begin a new decade – the often prophesied “2020.”  It is probably the second biggest group milestone year of my generation, coming just after The New Millennium (Y2K) and just before the next two entries on the list (1999 when we lost the Moon, and 2010 when Jupiter became our solar system’s second star.) So in trying to take a philosophical approach to the getting past this marker on our collective journey, I figured it’d be a good idea to make a list of things we should prepare to leave behind. Of course, it goes without saying these are only my opinions, not those of any company or publication I work with, so I’ve taken the liberty to include whatever strikes my fancy. (These may not be the things we will leave behind as much as the things we should leave behind – but I’ll let you guys work that one out on your own.)

• Text messages from our pharmacy – Now I’m not going to mention any specific pharmacy nor hint that you can figure out which one I’m specifically addressing by Counting Vegetable Surpluses, but please stop sending us text messages. You’ve gone in my lifetime from a bad mall trinket store to a friendly supporter of our health needs with reasonable co-pays, to a vulture - drug pusher that acts as the front-end for a greedy pharmaceutical industry – and one that does absolutely anything to get people to renew prescriptions before they need them (if they do at all.) I believe that internet traffic would easily drop by ten to twenty percent if these ‘reply yes to activate automatically refilling every prescription you’ve ever had since you were six years old’ messages were to disappear, just as I believe we’d gain back a rain-forest if register receipts were no longer allowed to print coupons we don’t need.
•  Airline Improvement Announcements – Please… Just…Stop. We’re on to you by now. You’re not fooling anyone. Don’t throw lies around like “to improve our service” or “to meet the need of our frequent customers” before you announce you’ve decided to do something that makes you more money, reduces our benefits and comfort, and generally makes the flying experience even more miserable than it is today. We get it – every new announcement is just the flyers being further screwed. There’s really no need anymore to pretend anything other than that is going on.
• Unified Communications – OK, it’s enough now. When Judge Greene broke-up the Bell System monopoly we lost any chance we had of communication and collaboration companies operating in our best interest. I get that. All of the remaining services and players would rather see their competitors pushing up the daisies than working side-by-side with them. Every few years it looks like they have a “come to the deity of your choice” moment and say they’ll all work more closely, only to be followed by years of blaming the other guys when the Kumbaya chorus falls apart. Calling this space “Unified Communications” needs to be classified as one of life’s most ironic oxymorons, right alongside “Jumbo Shrimp” and "Military Intelligence” and should be officially retired as the moniker of our industry. Maybe replace it with something more descriptive, like the “my service is better than yours and you should just die” industry. I donno – I’ll keep working on possible alternates.
• Industry Organizations that support the organization, not the industry – OK, this is a tough one, but if an industry organization’s efforts devolve into promoting the organization not the industry then they’ve lost sight of what their entire mission should have been. Conducting successful events, raising the non-profit coffers, creating a “certification” that no other industry recognizes, having inspirational and aspirational meetings and similar efforts are a good sign that you’ve lost sight of what you should be doing. If you’re not advocating in front of governments, standards bodies, agencies, etc. and/or educating your members about how your industry is rapidly transforming and how they need to get their act together or be in trouble if they don’t change with it, then you’re likely doing more harm than good. This is definitely a category that should just slink-off into the night.
• Email we can’t reply to – It should make perfect sense that if a person, firm or organization sends me an email, they should be required to read any responses to it. If an email reply is not an appropriate method of communicating with them then they should be prevented from using it as a method to communicate with me. This needs to be regulated somewhere big so that the rest of the world is forced to follow. (Yes, I’m looking at you California – you know who you are.) The law would be really simple. Something like “Proposition three thousand fifty nine and a half - Every outgoing email needs to have a monitored reply to address. Firms that send emails that cannot be replied to will be forced to pay the hourly rate of every recipient that needs to find a way to address the message and cannot simply reply.” The practice would disappear rapidly – as it rightly should.
• Cars being sold as smartphones – Really? When I go shopping for a new car the first thing I look at is NOT if it can play Pandora or act as a WiFi hotspot (and force me to need yet another “unlimited” mobile internet plan.) I – like most sane people – care about more mundane and less glamorous things, like for instance how well it drives, how reliable it will be, what kind of gas/electric mileage it gets, how many airbags or other safety features it has, and a bucket load of other things much, much more important than how well it mimics the features I already own and pay for in my mobile device. Dear auto manufacturers – please…just…stop, you’re not fooling anyone.
• Greeting Cards – of course, when a family member’s birthday rolls-around we all have to get them some greeting cards. One from the pets, at least one from each child, and from us an enjoyable funny one and then a mushy one (and then of course you have to profess your love and/or appreciation in your own words on the mushy one or you’re being insincere – but that’s off the point I suppose.) The last family birthday we celebrated cost us fifty-two bucks in greeting cards – seriously. Let’s just acknowledge this for what it is – taking advantage of our fragile emotions and insecurity – and from now on just write “enjoy your day” on the side of a twenty dollar bill. Everyone will be happier in the long run, I assure you.
• Short Blogs – So yeah, I’m a blogger. I do this for professional organizations, for publications, and (like this time) when an idea pops into my head and I need to flush it out to clear my thinking. My last blog was criticized by one of my editors (who I respect to no end) because, amongst the list of reasons, he felt people would think it was too long and stop reading it. Really? We’ve devolved as a society so badly that anything over a thousand words is “too much effort to invest?” Forget the 1,255 pages of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace; forget the Magna-Carta at 3,600 words; forget the 49 pages of Thomas Payne’s Common Sense; forget the Declaration of Independence at 1,458 words – again, really? Are we really saying the collective consciousness of the world’s educated population that knows how to read can only stretch their efforts about as long as the 870 words in Don McLean’s American Pie or the 548 words of A Visit From St. Nicholas? Let’s put that myth behind us. Please restore my faith in humanity. If you’ve made it to the end of this ~1,300 word blog then post a comment that proudly acknowledges this conquest. After all, the next time you head to the blogosphere you wouldn’t want to find the levee was dry...

If you have your own entries for the let’s leave them behind list please feel free to add them in the comments. Happy decade to all, and to all a good night……

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This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has over three decades of experience providing problem solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works as The Director of UC Strategy and Research for Poly. He is also the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. David can be reached at [email protected] and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info.