The Idiot-Bridge

This is a new term to me… one I heard on BBC Radio 4 earlier in the week, and it’s indicative of our times. For the life of me, I can’t recall who spoke the term, as it was largely in the background, but the passive/intrusive nature of radio embedded the term in my brain nonetheless (so apologies for the absence of due credit for origination).

As far as I could infer, what the speaker was referring to was his lack of fear in asking logical questions to issues that are often taken for granted, but he did so in a very self-deprecating way. It’s a discipline in writing that is easily overlooked and my best recall of his definition of the term is that through sincere and honest questioning one arrives at a state of clarity equal to If I can understand it, anyone can.

It begs the question whether worthwhile comment should be the sole domain of ‘experts’ alone. Diametrically opposite the expert view (informed punditry, whatever…) is the Citizen Journalist, upon whom social media and blogging have conferred a legitimacy we all ought to treat with extreme caution. Being published in the blogosphere (sic.) is not the same as having a by-line in The Herald Tribune or The Times – but nobody has explained this to the Citizen Journalist.

So it occurs to me, that the Idiot Bridge actually fulfils two functions.

Firstly, it is the crucial flux between what an entity / brand / communicator assumes is understood by recipients of messaging, versus the actual level of understanding. Secondly, it helps information-users more clearly define the authority of the voice behind the messaging, and – consequently – the weight any relevant information should be accorded. This process by itself will grow ever more important for anybody who makes a living by receiving, evaluating and grading information – i.e. virtually all of us.

In his book Information Overload (Penguin 1999) the psychologist, author and Sony Award-winning broadcaster/journalist David Lewis actually coins the phrase Information Fatigue Syndrome and furthermore predicts the potential damage to health of the internet age phenomenon. Some of his work featured on BBC TV’s Tomorrow’s World in the early ‘90s, but it would take the best part of a generation for some of his insights to be fully appreciated.

I now proudly count myself among the number of Idiot Bridges and suggest one of our first tasks is to strip away the egregious artifice and ‘non-speak’ so prevalent in commerce and politics today. Otherwise, information will kill us.

“The world we have created today has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.” Albert Einstein