CEO Marc Frey, Frey MediaEverything!

I remember when I was 15-years-old, I came across a sentence written by German philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller that read, “Happiness is to love and to be loved.” This sentence stood out among an ocean of words and immediately stuck with me. For a few months I examined it’s meaning and tried to find a better definition of happiness, but I couldn’t. Hence I made it my “credo.”

Many decades later this simple definition of happiness has served me well and still stands strong like a 100-year-old oak tree that has stood the test of time. Over the years the interpretation of “to love” has evolved from the youth-driven romantic love between the sexes to a broader scope that includes the love one develops for family, friends, pets, nature, a hobby, work, a place and a community. As one gains experience, one also learns the joy of loving (giving) without an immediate expectation of being loved back (receiving).

Most of Schiller’s famous works were written in the last two decades before the 17th century ended, long before the Industrial Revolution and the more recent communication revolution that has changed society forever. The Industrial Revolution brought material things into our lives, but there are two major flaws in our obsession with owning “things.” First, they seldom give back happiness. Second, they take away time from our ability to love and to be loved, and therefore are in direct competition with our desire to find happiness in our lives.

The communication revolution has made us all interconnected. And while the advantages are many — including my ability to quickly research Schiller on the Internet without leaving my chair — it also carries great dangers. There is the obvious loss of privacy. But more pertinent is that the ability to be superficially connected to many people can give us the false feeling of being loved, while in truth we might become lonelier. Compare the elaborate deep thoughts that Schiller and Goethe exchanged with each other via long handwritten letters to our habit of hammering down a few words on a keyboard and hitting “send.”

How credible is a text message claiming, “I love you” that took 3 seconds to compose, compared to a handwritten note personally delivered? Sometimes it’s not just about the words, but the amount of effort that went into it, the originality of the thought, the style, the form and the intensity.

Do Hallmark cards turn you on or would you rather receive a handwritten note? Obviously a handwritten note takes more effort, which leads to my next gripe about technology. I often wonder if our ability to “instant that” and “instant this” gets in the way of original thought. If we can’t hide behind preprinted cards, behind superficial news, behind the common wisdom shared via blogs, if there was no easy way out, we would have to stop, think and create.

Of course it isn’t technology that’s the culprit. It’s the way it has caused superficiality. As an illustration of my point, one of my favorite sayings is: “We are over-newsed, but under-informed” (of course the word “over-newsed” hasn’t made it to the dictionary yet, but it should).

There are a few things we could do as a society to counter-balance the influence of technology. As a starter, schools should put more emphasis on teaching our children to think properly and less emphasis on acquiring knowledge. We should encourage more research on what effect technology has on society. And finally, it is in our own power to limit the amount of time we are spending with technology. This is not that difficult to do if you start with the premise that every minute one uses to receive or send superficial data amounts to much ado about nothing and is in direct competition with the ability to love and be loved.

After all do you want to twitter your life away or would you rather find time to do and experience things that really matter?

With my love…
Marc Frey