"Instanicity"

As much as I have watched professional tennis over the years, I never cease to be awe-struck at the power of the players' serves and at how quickly the ball moves back and forth over the net. The fact that the players manage to return anything hit at them is equally amazing. (I know one thing that distinguishes professional athletes from the rest of us ordinary mortals is the fact they make what is so challenging to us seem easy. Still, even professional tennis appear to struggle with returning 95 mile-per-hour serves and cross-court returns. I confess to taking some comfort in that.) To says tennis is a rapid-fire game is a great understatement.

Thanks to today's technology, another rapid-fire game that virtually all of us play is communication. With the arrival of such communication tools as emails, tweets and text messages, we have the capability of creating and sending out a communique to multiple receivers at a moment's notice. In an article in the August, 2019, edition of "The Atlantic," author Jonathan Rauch raises the important question: Is this a good thing? Rauch writes, "Instanticity, if you will, is turning out to be a bug of online life and internet architecture, not a feature." He notes, early users of this technology assumed that faster must be better when it came to our ability to receive and send messages. He concludes this may not be the case. I agree.

There is something to be said for taking a step back and giving thought to new information or a comment from a friend or colleague before responding. While "shooting from the hip" may have a certain romantic appeal, using one's noggin before reacting impulsively is a wiser path to travel. A snap response is often misguided and requires some degree of back-pedaling. While using one's cognitive abilities may be slower, often times it protects us from misstatements and, more importantly, ourselves. Also, it helps us keep our relationships on rather than off-track.