“I don’t read anymore; I just talk to people who have.” — Dr. Tom Malloy, University of Utah
Dr. Malloy’s tongue-in-cheek comment sparked an interesting conversation about… well… conversation. When two people have a conversation, they act as proxies for the many ideas in their heads which are drawn from the many things they have read. In effect, a conversation is a many-to-many interaction that is both mediated and moderated by the participants. The individuals catalog, sort, tag, and filter ideas as they are drawn into the shared space of the conversation.
The upshot of this is that the memes, or actual ideas, gain a tremendous advantage in establishing new connections when conversations happen. Similar to Dawkin’s principle of the “selfish gene,” these “selfish memes” promote their longevity every time humans converse. For memes, the conversation is like sex, an opportunity to mingle, merge, and generate offspring that will outlast them.
Moreover, the use of the Internet, cell phones, and social software has greatly increased the number of conversations happening at any given moment via chat, newsgroups, discussion forums, and even comment-savvy blogs. Without a doubt, the potential for survival of various memes has skyrocketed as these channels have emerged.
But the great thing about all this is that conversation gives us an incredible way of processing the world as we move into an age of relentless and omnipresent information. Rather than setting up a really clever RSS reader using technology, just go talk to someone who reads blogs. Rather than spend hours organizing bookmarks, just ask around for what’s useful when you need it.
I discovered a while back that I could get what I need faster by asking someone else than by looking for it myself — precisely because of the time it takes to process the glut of information now available on any given topic (just hit google sometime and you’ll see what I mean)!
So, the real value of communicative technologies like social software is that they re-enable and enhance our ability to use a time-tested means of information processing, i.e. the conversation, in new and interesting ways!
Now stop reading this and go have a conversation with someone. :-)
1. Yankel on September 11, 2005 2:38 PM writes...
Talking with someone is probably a more productive means of getting valuable information than, say, running a web search. Provided, of course, that the person we're talking with is privy to the information we're interested in.
In the long run, however, it would certainly be advisable for at least one of the people taking part in the many-to-many conversation that develops to actually know what he or she is talking about. At least ONE of the conversants should read the book or article (it wouldn't hurt if he or she actually wrote the book or article), take the time to think things through, and ultimately get a worthwhile perspective on the issue. If conversation - detached from the conversants actually knowing what they're talking about - becomes a value unto itself, it seems to me that GIGO becomes an inevitable result.
Permalink to Comment2. Amy Gahran on September 12, 2005 9:39 AM writes...
Yep -- this is why I keep harping on the theme of "the public conversation" in my own work to guide people in using online media well. This, I think, is the true strength and the main point of weblogs, wikis, discussion forums, citizen journalism, collaborative learning, and other ascendant aspects of the media landscape.
In contrast, heirarchical types of communication (conventional publishing or broadcasting, teaching, traditional news organizations or PR/marketing practices, etc.) attempt to control or ignore the public conversation -- which they could only achieve in a limited sense when access to communication was more limited.
I discussed this in my recent talk, "Content strategy for weblogs: It's the Conversation, Stupid!"
- http://snipurl.com/hm2t
- Amy Gahran
Permalink to CommentEditor, Contentious
3. David Weinberger on September 12, 2005 11:42 AM writes...
Great point, Paul. Two additions:
1. It's not converation vs. RSS tech but conversation + RSS. I suspect you agree ;)
2. Conversation doesn't just "process" information. It appropriates it -- it's how we make it our own. But in conversation we appropriate ideas mutually with another, which is exactly how a culture of individuals manages to stay a culture. (It's also why pay-per-use is such a terrible, culture-killing way of being fair.)
Permalink to Comment4. Ericka Menchen Trevino on September 12, 2005 8:08 PM writes...
Great post. As everyone has mentioned the hours I spend reading and organizing info makes me a much better conversation partner. It is great to talk to people who read things I don't. My one friend at school keeps me up with the political blogs & I keep him up with the technical & research / academic blogs that I read. And of course that's what professors are for & why it's great to stop in and ask about things. I have only one friend I see regularly who tends to read the same blogs & it's interesting because it usually starts with "did you see the thing about..." and we talk and if there are others around we have to fill them in or they're lost.
Permalink to Comment5. Jay Pfaffman on September 13, 2005 2:42 PM writes...
At some point in grad school it occurred to me that in most cases doing a database search at the library (or even at my desk) was much less efficient than asking a professor who knew about whatever it was. They might not have a full citation (though for a while there was a secretary who did and would as often as not put a copy of the paper in my box!), but knowing that I was looking for an article by so-and-so was a big help. Also, a well-connected professor was also likely to have access to in-press or pre-prints that were unavailable in the library.
Permalink to Comment6. Colin Donald on September 13, 2005 5:42 PM writes...
When I was a journalist, one of the principles drilled into me was to stop wasting time looking at primary sources and just get hold of an expert, fast.
Of course, that presupposes that the expert has the time (to tear themselves away from assimilating the blogsphere) and the inclination to do it for free...
BTW, can someone please explain to me the supposed difference between a meme and an idea? (And I am aware that a meme can be a piece of music, symbol etc.)
Permalink to Comment7. Nirmala on September 14, 2005 12:30 AM writes...
Interesting post indeed! I have a lot more to say about this, but I got to go catch up with some of my colleagues now ;) But you know what, I actually think everyone has to read and everyone has to converse...else we'll run out of people who read and have 'empty' conversations....and anways reading is also about catching someone's thoughts...actually, I think, we need to adopt an extremely balanced approach to this....read and talk...depending on where you are likely to get most of your 'knowledge' from
Permalink to Comment8. Robert Karls Stonjek on September 14, 2005 8:46 AM writes...
It is really a very simple evolutionary dynamic – there is a selection pressure for bigger brains, for reasons we are still enthusiastically debating, but the baby’s head is getting too big, they have to be born too soon and thus take ages to mature, and the resulting individual has a resource greedy pocket of fat behind the eyes that requires ever more feeding and ever more protection from injury as the skull becomes thinner to keep the top heavy weight down.
What to do?
Evolution seems to have toyed with two solutions – just make the whole thing bigger, like the Neanderthal, or network the brain so that no individual has possession of all of it.
And that’s how it was done. We all have a rudimentary complement of all brain areas, but some people specialise in particular areas hence arts, the sciences and all manner of other specialisations. Put each of those specialisations together into one ‘virtual’ brain and you might have assembled the ‘goal’ of evolution (so to speak), but that would be one enormous brain.
It is not just the amount of information that must be stored in one place, but having more than one specialisation requires an exponential growth in the area of the brain responsible for coordinating all of this – the prefrontal area.
Of course this all relies on just one specialist area – a ‘distributed’ or ‘virtual’ brain must be able to communicate with its various parts. We need a facility that has access to all areas of the brain (though not necessarily every detail), and can sum it into a single addressable form, say a personality. We know that language is such an interface, and consciousness provides the scratch pad or buffer for the communication process.
Thus in communication we are, apart from anything else, participating in our own extended consciousness (or brain), and it is this kind of participation that has fuelled the evolution that marks the difference between humans and other primates.
In participation in conversation we gain access to all of those other areas of the ‘virtual’ brain that are merely buds in our own physical brain. In this way we expand the mind, the brain, the memory, our art, our heart, our family, and our purpose for being here in the first place.
Kind regards
Permalink to CommentRobert Karl Stonjek
9. Nollind Whachell on September 15, 2005 1:21 PM writes...
Actually what you are describing is how I find a lot of information on the Web. Instead of scouring the Web or a mass of feeds daily, I have a "relationship" with a handful of sites that I visit daily to get the news I need. More often than not, I find items of great interest through these sites because of their "relationships" with other sites. I've even remember interestings sites that I've came across before because I remembered the referring site that I found it on (and tracked it down again on its site). Therefore, these key sites provide me with most of the information I need. In effect, they are like a person who is a great source of information that you frequently talk to get this information from (and of course they often do represent a person which is the author of the site).
Now what I would find interesting is if someone made a relational search engine that allowed me to plug in the key sites that I visit daily and then search by cluster link depth. The reason being is that as I said above, often times I find interesting stuff a couple of links away from these key sites I visit (i.e. six degrees of separation). Therefore, you could call this cluster link depth an "interestingness" indicator with a link depth of zero (0) being very interesting and a high end of six (6) being not very interesting (or whatever you want to call it). Of course you might still find something interesting at a high link depth but of course you'll also be spending a ton of time wading through a ton of search hits as well.
Taking this another step further, I'd like another setting being the type of cluster link depth you'd like to choose. By default it would be set on just "standard links" which are just the hyperlinks pointing off the site.
But I thought since we're talking about relationships with key sites, why not utilize that same approach as well. Therefore, I'd also like to see a link depth type setting called "relational links" which are searches only through the key sites that the site visits for daily information. Therefore, even though I may go to Kottke.org for information, if I set my "relational link" depth to 1, I would also be searching the list of sites that Kottke visits daily as well (i.e. Airbag, Anil Dash, etc).
And actually now that I think about it, you could even reverse this link or relationship search type and search by referring site depth as well (i.e. standard referrer link or relational referrer link). Therefore, I could do a search by who is pointing at Kottke.org as well since if these referrers are interested in the topic, they might have similar info on their site as well. Of course if the topic is very general and widespread (i.e. Katrina) then this type of search would be useless, as everyone on the Web might be pointing at it.
In addition, the frequency and amount of information that a site relays would also severly skew the results of these types of searches. Sites that are more focused on a particular topic instead of just talking about everything would probably give you better results. For example, if you included digg.com as one of your key sites then I think you may as well do a Google search (or just do a search on digg itself).
Permalink to Comment10. Michal Jacovi on September 18, 2005 7:56 AM writes...
We wrote a paper titled "Ask before you Search" (http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/km/ct/reachout/papers/p212-ribak.pdf). The question now is... should you read it? or should I tell you about it? ;)
Permalink to Comment11. Ratrace on September 23, 2005 4:15 AM writes...
Very well written article. You inspired me a lot. I think The art of conversation is a skill shared by most successful people. Good conversation promotes an image of self-confidence, intelligence, and wittiness.
Permalink to Comment12. Steven on October 11, 2005 9:26 AM writes...
A conversation is civil communication by two or more people, often on a particular topic. Moreover, The art of conversation is a learned skill that is common among successful, energetic people. If you are unable to effectively express yourself in any situation, you will likely find that you do not attract the attention and command the respect that is bestowed upon some others.
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