One of my most valuable lessons in communications came from a graduate course in philosophy. Each week we had to read the major writing of a medieval philosopher. These were weighty tomes, sometimes running to a thousand or more pages. And each week we had to write a two page paper that summarized the work.

I would start by writing fifteen or twenty pages, then cut those pages down to ten, then reduce those to five, until I finally succeeded in writing two pages that captured the core ideas. In the process of reading I had absorbed much. It was in the process of reflecting and writing that I truly began to comprehend. And it was in the process of distillation – of choosing what to leave in and what to leave out – that I actually learned something that made an impact. That process of absorption, comprehension, distillation was time-consuming and difficult, but it taught me an incredibly important skill that I have continued to hone, practice and rely upon all my life. I learned how to render the fat out of a bloated body of words and ideas, how to untangle a jumble of facts and opinions, how to extract from too much information something meaningful and memorable.

“For the first time in human history, any person can get ahold of almost any piece of information they want at a time and place of their choosing. The world is becoming much more Digital, Mobile, Virtual, Personal. DMVP.

Everything physical and analog is becoming digital. Everything can connect to a mobile device. What was once done in person can now be done virtually. The individual decides what, when, who and how in this newly personal world. Each of us has more information, greater control and higher expectations.”

-Carly Fiorina (circa 2001)