Page 6 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

INTRODUCTION

Where Are We?

ineteenth-century America witnessed the golden age
Nof the orator—peopled by rhetorical giants such as Abraham
Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry Clay, Frederick Douglass, Daniel
Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Phillip Brooks, among many others.
By the power of their words alone, these masters of the language
helped us understand who we are and for generations steered the
political and cultural evolution of the great American story.
The twentieth century saw the rapid rise of mass communication
and media. Newspaper empires sprang up in the United States and

Britain. Science fiction morphed into reality as radio, and then televi-
sion changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined. A tiny
community of orange orchards in California spread the fantastic
magic of a new art form called the motion picture around the world.

In the twenty-first century we are still in the pioneering phase
of exploring new frontiers as different from radio, TV, and newspa-
pers as talkie color movies were from silent black-and-white fi lms.
We are in the dawn of the age of social media. A quick visit to
Google will tell you that social media has hundreds of life-forms,
endless defi nitions, thousands of experts, countless books on the
subject, and tens of millions, soon perhaps billions, of discrete voices
all clamoring to be heard. Social media is a chaotic, jubilant expres-

v