I just read a post that said that some musicians were reporting that their perfect pitch (the ability to know exactly what a perfect A sounds like) is fading away. What could be causing this?

I don’t think anything is causing it.

Out of every 10,000 musicians, it’s not hard to imagine that throughout history, a few (2, 5, 10?) have had their pitch fade away. But in the old days, we never heard about it. Word didn’t spread. Perhaps you told your husband or the ensemble, but that was the end of it.

As word (about your product or your brand or your career or anything) is amplified and spread, it bumps into other news and becomes a trend.

This is a subtle but huge change in the way we think about the world. The connection of customers and employees and users and citizens and good guys and bad actors and everyone… it means that the way we see and understand information is changed forever.

I would take two things away from this:

1. Just because you heard about something happening for the first time doesn’t mean it’s the first time. It may just mean that it’s the first time it’s been widely reported. Sort of like what happens after you get a digital thermometer in your house–everyone suddenly gets a fever.

2. Be prepared for everything to be widely reported.