19.1 How Were We Supposed to Hear About the Bypass?

It all seemed to boil down to three bitter complaints:

First, that there was too much information;

Second, that there wasn’t enough of it

And third, that in any event it was confusing and inconsistent

A.H. Feller, 1943 (talking about the information campaign leading up to America’s involvement in World War II)

The earthlings in Douglas Adams’ science fiction classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are caught off guard to find out that their planet is going to be destroyed in the next two minutes to make room for a “hyperspatial express route through your solar system.” When they hear this announcement from the Vogons, the race that’s about to vaporize them, the earthlings object that they never heard about this. The Vogons reply:

There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.^[1]

This crisis mirrors one that the earthling protagonist, Arthur Dent, had been focused on until the space ships showed up: his house was also set for demolition to make room for a highway bypass. Arthur objected to a local councilman, Mr. Prosser, that he hadn’t been sufficiently warned, and Prosser’s reply was similar to the Vogons: “The plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.” (p. 8). It’s understandable that Arthur, along with the whole human race, feels there was a failure of communication. It’s no wonder they yelled “You should have told me!”

It’s harder to sympathize with the Vogons, or Mr. Prosser, when they yell back “You should have looked it up!”

Even though it probably didn’t involve demolition or space aliens, you have probably faced a similar situation at some point. You might have missed a crucial announcement because you didn’t look it up (on a website, instead of a distant planet), and were understandably annoyed that it was your job to discover that information instead of being told about it. Or you might have been the person responsible for making sure people hear important announcements, so you regularly sent out emails that were never read. Most of those emails contained a line saying “If you have further questions, visit this website,” but the public rarely does that — and they get angry at you anyway.

Rather than looking at Arthur’s side of things, this chapter will focus on the senders of media messages, and the things they should think about if they want to do their job well. We’ll look at all scales: from a mass announcement sent to millions of recipients to a private message sent to a romantic partner.