Paul Watzlawick is an Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher. I learned about Paul while reading a book by Erik Spiekermann called “Stop Stealing Sheep and Learn how Type Works” where I came across a single line from his 1967 book, Pragmatics of human communication.
The first of Watzlawick’s five axioms of communication (and the only one I can remember on demand, my memory really stinks) reads:
“One cannot not communicate” Because every behaviour is a kind of communication, people who are aware of each other are constantly communicating. Any perceivable behaviour, including the absence of action, has the potential to be interpreted by other people as having some meaning.
This book was published in 1967, so I imagine he had that thought long before then (and probably after). I imagine today, were he still alive (he passed in 2007 – but internet years are like dog years so it’s fair to say that at least 20 years have passed since his departure from the mortal coil), he would be flabbergasted by the size of our personal networks and the rate at which they’re growing. I know I am, and I’ve been here the whole time.