As we zoom into another year of the digital revolution, people have more and more sources of easily-accessible information.
This is a fantastic thing.
But it gives rise to the biggest business communications challenge of our age.
How do we grab and keep our audience when we're competing for attention with an ever-exploding number of information sources?
And how do we get our message across when - as a consequence of the upsurge in available information - our targets have less and less time to listen to us?
This challenge is reflected in the media world by the ever-diminishing length which television gives people to make their point in news reports.
In America, where they make a point of studying such things, the typical length of a "sound bite" on television - the time the news bulletin gives to a person being interviewed - has fallen from forty-three seconds in the 1960s to nine seconds now.
This has unkindly been interpreted as part of a "dumbing down" process by the media.
But you can also interpret it as meaning audiences are becoming more discriminating, and so are inherently gravitating to information packaged in more easily digestible chunks.
Whether we are trying to get across a message on TV or face-to-face or through the internet, we're faced with the challenge of making our point in a shorter, punchier more memorable way than was previously necessary.
And in the business world, getting across your message is something you must do - amidst this tougher competition in the information market place.
As the American businessman, Lee Iacocca, observed "You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere."
Of course it often takes more time and thought to ensure that our message is constructed in a more succinct and impactful way.
It's a truth Mark Twain noticed when he confessed: "I did not have time to write a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."
These days, time constraints and digital competition mean most long versions just don't stand a chance.
