An intro of sorts...

Alright so first things first… I must confess this blog stems from an assignment for school (MCIS at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ). However, I must also confess that I have already put much more time and effort into the construction of this blog than I ever thought I would. Guess I’m hooked.

The idea for the title of this blog…. (which I must give due credit to my artistic and insightful husband for helping me come up with the title)... Communication Cubism.  Ok might sound a little bit random, but let me explain. Cubism is an avant-garde art movement in the early 20^th century forged by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Cubism is essentially art that is broken up, put back together, and reassembled at abstract and indeterminate angles.

According to Wikipedia.com

“In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.”

And more specifically…

“Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter”

So what in the world does that have to do with the field of communication? Well maybe nothing. But I’d like to attempt to draw a parallel to contemporary society’s use of a multi-faceted array of communication methods (our “large variety of merged [communication] subject matter”).  We have cell phones, smart phones, TV, DVR, BluRay, the Internet, Facebook, g-chat… and so on…

With all these different modes of communication it can be hard to not multi task. Even when you think you might not be multi tasking… chances are you actually are. When you are watching TV typing an email on your laptop. When you are leaving a message on someone’s voicemail while ordering in the drive-thru. When you are sitting in class Facebook chatting listening to the lecture. When you are typing a blog entry while watching the VMAs (what? Never. :) ). I’d argue that you’re multi tasking.

Your communication energies are not focused on a single task. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you are fragmenting any efforts to any one receiver. Sure you are communicating but is it effective? Is your message being muddled by a lack of focus? At what point does our love (or maybe necessity) to multi-task our communication efforts end up hurting our message?

The parallel I’m making refers to the definition of cubism breaking up and reassembling forms; of intersecting the forms at random and removing a “coherent sense of depth”. Is our multi-tasking a new form of cubism? And if so, is it bad? Or is it beautiful and unique like many of the cubism artworks are? Does multi tasking help us create our own communication worlds and pictures?

These are the questions I’d like to pose in this blog. With the help of research and scholarly insight I’d like to delve deeper into the way we have come to rely on our “ease of life” smart phones and other technologies that promote multi tasking.  I believe this is a relevant topic in today’s society. In fact, this topic actually came to my attention through a dear friend at work, Mary, who had recently heard a show on NPR about multi tasking. Since that conversation I’ve been interested in the ways this multi tasking habit might be affecting our ability to communicate (for better or for worse). And the way we break up our communication and reassemble it into perhaps less cohesive messages.