communEQation by Julian Smith

For over a decade, our obsessive Digital Age screen habits have eroded our focus, productivity, acuity and empathy. This has had a damaging impact on our interpersonal communication capabilities. Today's most effective, influential, and highly rewarded communication skill remains Emotional Intelligence, also known as EQ (which stands for "Emotional Quotient"). But applying EQ demands empathy, perception and cognitive fluency—the very faculties undermined by our habitual fixation on screens. Now "communEQation" reveals and resolves the complex communication challenges of this over-messaged Digital Age, illuminating the elusive pathway to an effective balance between screen use and peak communicative function.