Chapter 10 business card epistemology

With the European Championship just over and the Olympic Games just around the corner, it is fashionable to say that Greece must be called.It is said that in the Temple of Delphi on Mount Olympus in ancient Greece, there is a stele engraved with a line of big characters: "Man, know yourself".The vernacular words are remembered because of how many people have spent their entire lives, read countless people, and know countless people, but they still find that the so-called "knowing yourself" turns out to be the greatest luxury in life. In comparison, it is obviously much easier to let others know yourself through introduction and self-introduction than "know yourself".In the normal social area, the mainstream media you rely on when introducing yourself to others is undoubtedly a business card.The second prosperity of business cards in China was about the same as the boom in doing business in the 1980s.Back then, Zhang Yimou played the role of Sun Wangquan, a farmer in "Old Well" (1986), who took the business card from the cadre, and after reading it, he respectfully returned it to the other party.Yin Rongwan is here, and in a blink of an eye, eighteen years later, it is unimaginable to see in the TV commercials, three wretched men who handed business cards to each other according to traditional business etiquette. Besides being wretched, they became failures. The main reason for buyers is business cards, paper business cards.

It is the electronic business card that beats the paper business card - in the above advertising situation, the handsome guy who shows a certain brand of mobile phone to the customer and calls himself "My Business Card" wins the customer's favor with leading digital equipment and successfully wins the bid, although I have not yet I still can’t figure out how a mobile phone can be used as a business card—for example, business cards are always used for exchanging. If mobile phones can also be exchanged like business cards, when the other party accepts the Business Card and also hands over his mobile phone of the same model, then The transaction is still said to be equal; if the other party is exchanging an old mobile phone, it is obvious that the business has not yet been negotiated, but it is a loss first.Admittedly, if it can be proved that the handover ceremony of this trendy "mobile phone business card" is just to show each other, then one has to admit that Zhang Yimou is indeed brilliant and ahead of his time.

Last month, Microsoft obtained a patent for "Method and Apparatus for Transmitting Power and Data Using the Human Body", making the prospect of electronic business cards bright.Based on this technology, human beings can exchange data through the skin using electronic devices worn on the body.In other words, as long as you shake hands with someone (kiss, slap your mouth, kick your ass), you can transfer information, including business cards, to the other party.As early as 1996, IBM had demonstrated the transmission of data from one person to another through the human body.Under the pressure of electronic business cards, traditional business cards as paper media are catching up. They have worked hard on materials and deliberately sought changes with another "paperless". For example, Maximus Company in Sri Lanka processed business cards from elephant dung.When the country's former prime minister visited the White House, he gave it to President Bush as a gift, Sri Lanka's diplomatic protocol. In the past, elephants were given as gifts, but now they are given elephant dung, and elephant dung is given to the Republican Party. Keep up with the times and be appropriate.In addition to being creative and environmentally friendly, there is a wonderful function that electronic business cards do not have, which is to quickly create topics and shorten the few seconds of silence that usually occurs after receiving a business card. Maximus said: "Elephant dung paper is a good conversation topic. If you give someone a business card made of elephant dung paper, the other person will immediately want to sniff it. The topic will be opened in this way, and the two sides will become familiar with each other at once." Although it was opened due to dung, the elephant dung business card itself does not have any peculiar smell worth sniffing. Not only is it not smelly, the elephant dung business card received by Secretary of State Powell also has the fruity smell of cinnamon and banana.

Nevertheless, if we look back at the history of business cards, it is not difficult to find that the demise of paper business cards is a matter of time. Even if the old mud on elephants can be rubbed off in the future, paper business cards can be made into paper, which still does not seem to help.It is said that business cards were also invented by us Chinese (I guess no one is willing to argue with us except Koreans and Japanese). This conclusion is obviously not a matter of course that "paper is also invented by Chinese".In fact, the early business cards did not use paper but bamboo, so they were called "famous thorns". There is no longer the feeling of the murder weapon, but it is also the murderer who killed the card many years later.While successfully reducing the weight of the paper business card, it also opens up the possibility of unlimited extension of the business card. On August 7, 1793, Macartney received in Tongzhou "a huge business card made of red paper. If you open it, it will be enough to cover the walls of the room." Cover it." Large-scale film production became popular in the Qing Dynasty.There is an anecdote written by Wu Jianren: Foreigners' business cards are only one or two inches in size, while Chinese name cards are as large as five or six inches.The business cards used for negotiating with foreigners in the officialdom are even bigger, with characters as big as fists, and the meaning is unknown.A foreigner met prostitutes on the sea, and saw that the business cards of the prostitutes were very different: "Why are your business cards also in big characters?" The prostitute replied: "It can be used as an invitation card for entertaining guests." Same."

Mr. Lao She said: If "the (official position) is not printed on the business card, it will be more obvious that life is like a blank check." A blank check, while helping others to understand themselves, it also has the function of self-knowledge.Business cards are getting bigger and bigger, because the identity and role of the film owner are becoming more and more complicated, it is difficult to explain in one word, the version is expanded and the capacity is increased, one piece is folded in three, and the next page is re-turned to the next page. Multimedia "blockbusters" are prevalent, information is exploding, and it is by no means an upset that electronic business cards win with their large capacity.It's just that business cards, as well as they can be crafted, whether they help to make you known to others and help to deepen that awareness, are still moot and harder to prove.It is sometimes more difficult for a person to prove that others know himself than "know yourself".Ms. Rao Ying went through a series of lawsuits, which were arduous and difficult, not to prove that Zhao Zhongxiang knew her.