Rethinking Communication: Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal

Welcome to the 16th edition of Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal.

Table of Contents

• Jess’ Monthly Reflection

• Communication Before The Digital Age

• The Communication Defaults We No Longer Notice

• Designing Communication for Humans

Jess’ Monthly Reflection

This edition is about a topic many of us feel overwhelmed by: communication.

Three different conversations sparked it, and it’s one of my favourite topics.

My phone lives on do not disturb; all my notifications are turned off, and I generally check my emails once per week. These are intentional acts designed to prioritise what's important to me: focus, flow and attention.

Over the past decade, I've been experimenting with ways to filter out noise and reclaim silence in a world designed for constant interruption. I don't remember the moment I began, but I remember the relief I feel each time I remove another layer of access to the outside world. I understand this is a privilege that comes with working for myself and questioning the defaults we inherited. But the experience of uninterrupted concentration is something everyone should be able to access.

Right now, that feels impossible. A 2025 Microsoft study found employees are interrupted every two minutes during core hours by meetings, emails or chats. This is an average of 275 times a day!

Thankfully, I'm not alone in wanting better. If this resonates, I highly recommend Deep Work and Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. All three shaped how I think about communication and offer powerful tools to rethink our digital lives.

So, in this edition, we'll rethink communication. If you feel like you're always behind, there's nothing wrong with you. It's our relationship to communication that needs questioning.

Enjoy January’s Snow Moon,

Jess Price

Founder & Chief Vision Officer

EXPLORING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

^{Research Approach: AI-assisted synthesis to access and distil credible historical and contemporary sources; insights cross-checked; citations included.}

Communication Before The Digital Age

For most of human history, communication was slow, deliberate and shaped by proximity. But then we discovered new ways to communicate with each other. Each technological leap introduced new tools and expectations. Communication became faster, more scalable, and always-on. This acceleration has fundamentally reshaped what it means to stay in touch.

Pre-Industrial (before 1760): The Printing Press

The Gutenberg Printing Press, developed in the 1440s, represents a shift from oral knowledge and scribal elites. It industrialised information, made literacy widespread and created formats like newspapers and journals. For the first time, ideas could circulate far beyond the village square or coffeehouse. 

First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840): The Telegraph

In the 1839s, Samuel Morse, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail invented the telegraph. It was built on decades of scientific advances and introduced Morse Code. On 24 May 1844, the first message was sent: "What hath God wrought!" By 1866, transatlantic telegraph cables made global messaging possible. The era of instantaneous long-distance communication had begun.

Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914): The Telephone

"Mr Watson, come here - I want to see you." This was the first telephone call made on 10 March 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. Unlike the telegraph, it could transmit tone and emotion. Early phones worked in pairs until the switchboard (1878) allowed manual connection between users. By the 1890s, the telephone became the dominant form of long-distance communication.

Third Industrial Revolution (1970-2006): The Email

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the world's first email, introducing the @ symbol and launching a new era of office communication. Email remained niche until the 1990s, when it exploded in popularity. Hotmail launched in 1996, BlackBerry brought email to mobile in 2002, and Gmail followed in 2004. We also saw the introduction of instant messaging platforms AIM (1997) and MSN Messenger (1999). This shift redefined communication as asynchronous and text-based.

Fun side fact: the first spam email was sent in 1978.

Fourth Industrial Revolution (2011-now): The Smartphone

By the 2010s, communication shifted again. Smartphones extended communication beyond the office, embedding it into every second of daily life. Slack (2013) and Microsoft Teams (2017) brought real-time, channel-based collaboration. Slack aimed to replace email, but instead it became another layer, and by 2025 more than 700 million messages were sent daily. By 2015, conversations spanned email, phone, messaging apps and social platforms. Email traffic surged from 281.1 billion in 2018 to a predicted 392.5 billion in 2026. We now carry every mode of communication in our pockets, creating a world optimised for constant cognitive overload.

What this reveals 

Across each era, communication gained speed, volume and reach, but lost a natural human pace. Each leap conditioned us to prioritise immediacy and availability. Consequently, we now face two systemic failures:

• Overload: More information than we can meaningfully process

• Fractured attention: No space for focus or recovery

This is the default we've inherited: systems that reward urgency and access over clarity and intent. Yet cracks are showing. The rise of the analogue movement signals a desire to reconnect on human terms.

THE LOGIC WE’VE INHERITED

The Communication Defaults We No Longer Notice

Communication is supposed to connect us, but right now, it feels like the opposite.

Smartphones marked a major shift in how we interact, keeping us reachable by call and text, while spawning new industries promising to help us communicate more efficiently. But instead of streamlining, we now bounce from app to app, checking who wants our attention next.

The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. Slack was meant to replace email, but email hasn't slowed down. To understand why, we need to look at the logic beneath our tools.

1. Our systems were built for speed, scale and visibility

Every major communication shift since the telegraph aimed to increase speed and reach. But instead of retiring old or outdated tools like we used to (remember MSN Messenger?), we added more. Today's norms reward fast replies, visible activity and constant access. Presence indicators and read receipts gamify responsiveness, fast replies are misread as competence, and our infrastructure now optimises for responsiveness. Together, we have increased the human pace to a level of fragmentation and overwhelm:

• 53% of desk workers feel pressure to reply quickly, and 63% make an effort to remain active, even if they're not working (Slack, 2023).

• Workers receive, on average, 117 emails and 153 Teams messages per workday (Microsoft, 2025).

• The average employee spends 392 hours per year in meetings (Flowtrace, 2025).

2. We are communicating more, but connecting less.

A flood of tools has created overload, fractured attention and rising loneliness. Analogue interactions used to anchor us in our communities, but today digital platforms dominate. Without shared norms or boundaries, digital communication has become reactionary. Instead of enabling connection, it leaves us exhausted:

• Teams use an average of 18 apps per day, with every switch adding toggle tax and draining time (HubStaff, 2026)

• 85% of U.S. office workers resend messages across platforms weekly; 69% do so daily (Atlassian, 2023)

• Internet users over 16 spend an average of 6 hours 38 minutes online per day (We Are Social, 2025)

3. It is time to return to a human pace.

We're seeing the cost of constant connection, but rather than questioning why after-hours work happens, we pass Right to Disconnect laws. Instead of rethinking email or meetings, we use GenAI to summarise messages or attend meetings for us. Instead of using new technology intentionally to ask how we can communicate more effectively, we remain reactive:

• 62% of workers reply after hours just to appear committed (Elmo Software, 2024)

• 1 in 3 employees say the pace of work in the past five years has become so intense that it's impossible to keep up (Microsoft, 2025)

• 75% of workers say it takes longer to resolve issues digitally than in person (Email Tool Tester, 2024)

Redesign at the Level of Meaning

Many of today's problems stem from inherited meanings we rarely question:

• speed = productivity

• presence = performance

• responsiveness = respect

• communication = visibility

• connection = constant access

These were all design choices that reinforce urgency and reaction over a natural human pace. The opportunity now is to understand the logic we've inherited and create new design principles based on depth, clarity and connection.

CREATING A NEW PARADIGM FOR TOMORROW

Designing Communication for Humans

If the last three decades taught us to optimise communication for speed, scale and visibility, the future must focus on more human approaches. This shift demands rethinking how, why and when we communicate.

Below are five possible design principles, drawn from Paradigm Makers Essential Elements:

People: From Responsiveness to Connection

Old Paradigm: Fast replies = competence
New Paradigm: Thoughtful contribution = shared understanding

Hyper-responsiveness reinforces shallow engagement and constant multitasking. In contrast, thoughtful connection values timing, relevance and the impact. Designing for connection means creating communication rhythms that support a natural human pace.

Question: How can I shift my approach to the tools I use to communicate?

Innovation: From Constant Access to Designed Disconnection

Old Paradigm: Always reachable = always reliable
New Paradigm: Structured unavailability = resilient systems

Over-availability weakens humans by eliminating recovery time. Just as machines need time to load, humans need structured disconnection. This includes protected focus time, no-contact norms and the intentional design of communication flow.

Question: How can I protect my peak focus times for meaningful work?

Technology: From Message Load to Meaning Flow

Old Paradigm: More tools = more productivity
New Paradigm: Fewer, more intentional channels = less friction

More tools have created a fragmented experience where message quantity obscures meaning. Instead, we should design tools and norms that filter for signal. AI and system design can help, but only if we collectively define what effective communication looks like.

Question: How many tools do we currently use to communicate, and how do we use each one?

Economics: From Exhaustion to Asset

Old Paradigm: Communication = work
New Paradigm: Communication = strategic infrastructure

Most of us treat digital communication as the cost of doing work, rather than an enabler of it. Yet in complex environments, this communication supports sensemaking, coordination and decisionmaking. The shift now is to treat communication as an asset, ensuring it is resourced and governed like any critical infrastructure.

Question: If communication were a balance-sheet asset, how would we invest in it differently?

Norms: From Presence to Trust

Old Paradigm: Visibility = engagement
New Paradigm: Time autonomy = trust

Presence indicators, read receipts, and full calendars have made availability performative. But visibility isn't where value is created. Instead, we need to identify the environment and communication approach that helps each of us complete the work that creates value.

Question: If our team shared our communication preferences, what would I share?

To help with this one, you can try creating a Personal Operating Manual (here are two versions I’ve created (Landscape or Portrait).

How these principles fit together

We can create more human forms of communication by redesigning the logic that shapes our systems.

We inherited systems that asked: "How fast can you reply, how fast can you produce, and how visibly can you perform?"
Our new systems can ask: "What enables understanding, restores capacity, and sustains connection over time?"

When we shift from urgency to intentionality, we begin to build communication systems that acknowledge our human pace, so we can focus on the more important work and connecting with other humans.

DESIGNING 2075: WHAT HAPPENS IF WE START NOW

^{Scenario Generation Approach: AI-assisted scenario, based on the 5 design principles proposed above and Paradigm Makers’ 2075 vision of a world where our systems are intentionally designed to allow flexibility for humans and structure where it's needed.}

Beyond Urgency: The Design of Deliberate Communication

If we begin designing around these principles in 2026, what kind of communication systems could we live within by 2075?

By then, communication will have returned to its original role: binding people, ideas and systems together. Workplaces, cities and digital environments will no longer reward hyper-responsiveness. Instead, they will be intentionally paced, grounded in clear expectations and structured to protect human attention.

• Discernment replaces speed. Communication adapts to context. Some responses are intentionally delayed, and structured time for reflection is a design feature.

• Disconnection replaces visibility. Disconnection is built into system logic, not negotiated ad hoc. Everyone has visibility over each other's communication rhythms, and platforms are context-aware - automatically shifting mode depending on focus windows, rest cycles, or relationship proximity.

• Channels are few, curated, and interoperable. No more switching across a dozen apps to chase messages. Communication ecosystems route the right message to the right place with the appropriate urgency.

• Communication is treated as capital. Teams track clarity and trust, not volume or response time. Communication literacy, interface design and shared meaning-making are standard investments in both education and economic policy. Communication is treated as critical infrastructure, like water or energy.

• Norms are co-authored. Every community, team and organisation shares visible communication preferences and regularly revisits them. 'Digital etiquette' has matured into relational architecture, blending consent, cognition and culture.

In this future, communication is not just faster or smarter - it's truer to what it was always meant to be: a way of making meaning together across time, difference and distance.

Until next time,

Jess

P.S The concept of communication didn’t evolve in isolation. If you enjoyed this edition, you might also like:

• Rethinking Time

• Rethinking productivity through a farmer’s lens

• Rethinking work in the age of AI

• The system of work contributing to psychosocial hazards