Most partnerships don't end up in court.

Most friendships don't end in a fight.

Most customers don't leave in a huff.

Instead, when one party feels underappreciated, or perhaps taken advantage of, she stops showing up as often. Stops investing. Begins to move on.

No, I'm not going to sue you. Yes, I'll probably put my best efforts somewhere else.

Just because there are no firestorms on the porch doesn't mean you're doing okay. More likely, there are relationships out there that need more investment, quiet customers who are unhappy but not making a big deal out of it. They're worth a lot more than the angry ones.

When I was a kid at summer camp, a letter was as precious as gold (or perhaps candy). If you got five letters in a week, you were rich. Most of the time, we stood by the mailroom, plaintively waiting to see if there was some sort of message from the outside world–only to walk away disappointed.

Back home, missing a TV show was out of the question. If you didn’t see this episode of Mannix or Batman, it was likely you’d never get a chance, ever again.

And so we came to treat incoming data as precious. A lost email was a calamity. Reading everything in your RSS feed was essential. What if I miss something?

A new generation, one that grew up with a data surplus, is coming along. To this cohort, it’s no big deal to miss a tweet or ten, to delete a blog from your reader or to not return a text or even a voice mail. The new standard for a vacation email is, “When I get back, I’m going to delete all the email in my box, so if it’s important, please re-send it next week.”

This is what always happens when something goes from scarce to surplus. First we bathe in it, then we waste it.

First, two signs, each telling a very different story:

This sign says, "we're in power, we're going to use newspeak and double-talk and pretend we've done something to benefit you, which of course, we haven't." It also uses "conveniently" as an adverb, which is just annoying. Why not tell the truth, straight up?

On the other hand, this sign screams transparency and honesty. The farmer explained that on days when the corn was picked that day, he erases the scribbles on the bottom of the sign, but if the corn was picked just one day earlier, it's just not right to say 'fresh'. It's worth noting that instead of having two signs, one for each condition, he uses his own hand to tell the truth, quite vigorously. Guess who has the most popular corn stand in New York, even on days when it is not, apparently, fresh?

…and here's a fascinating, generous and over-the-top-in-a-good-way article on infographics by Ed Fry. Sometimes, earning attention is about being all three, not about gaming the system or getting lucky.

For the first time in its history, the editors at The New Yorker know which articles are being read. And they know who's reading them.

They know if the cartoons are the only thing people are reading, or if the fiction really is a backwater. They know when people abandon articles, and they know that the last 3,000 words of a feature on the origin of sand is being widely ignored.

They also know, or should know, whether people are looking at the ads, and what the correlation is between ad lookers and article readers. The iPad app can keep track of all of this, of course.

The question then: should they change? Should the behavior of readers dictate what they publish?

Of course, this choice extends to what you publish as well, doesn't it?

[updated: I fear many people missed my points here. A. this isn't a post about the New Yorker. and B. I'm not sure it should change. Perhaps it's the stuff we don't read that makes the rest of it worth reading. Racing to keep up with your readers and to pander to them might not be the best way to do work that matters. Sorry if I was insufficiently direct in my original notion. And yes, I'm aware of the irony of this update.]