What is a conversation? It’s essential to understand conversation if you want to be clear about the purpose of your web presence. In this new sequence I shall explore the meaning of conversation and how you can hold conversations online and integrate them with real life conversations.
Most people know a conversation if they see one. Two people meet and talk and listen. Talking and listening are both essential and the depth of their conversation is the degree to which they do both.
That’s fine as far as it goes but there is more to it.
Paying attention is essential to conversation; if one or both fail to listen, the conversation fails.
Conversation goes far beyond talking. Face to face conversations are often helpful because it means subtle cues in facial expressions or body language can add to the meaning of the exchange. So, paying attention involves more than listening.
Possibly closest to face to face conversations is Skype, where many visual cues can be picked up. Next of course there is telephone, where tone of voice can be heard.
Conversations with the Dead!
It is possible to have conversations with the dead! Jane Austen is very popular; many people engage with her, paying close attention to her text. Is this real conversation? It is if a conversation between a client and a consultant or psychiatrist is a conversation. Professional listeners say very little during a conversation, so why not include reading books or listening to recordings as conversations?
If someone takes a recording of Duke Ellington and jams along with it, they are in conversation. Ask what difference does it make if both musicians can respond to each other. Perhaps live musicians jamming demonstrates the power of a two-way conversation.
Music performed in a jam session might be banal but from time to time, and more often as musicians gain experience, discovering something new and unexpected.
The challenge for web designers is, how can we encourage similar generation of new ideas online?
