Tag: communication

I’ve started blogging over at The Satori Lab

Here is an excerpt of my first post and a link to the rest of the article:

A few months ago, listening to BBC Radio 4, I heard a government minister use a word, or one of its derivatives, well over 48 times in a four minute segment. Well, I only started counting after I had heard it half a dozen times and I stopped counting at 48, but the barrage continued. The word in question: innovation. The problem was, not one of the instances where the word was used had anything to do with real innovation. The word was being loosely employed to denote some aspiration for newness or a mild departure from previous practice.

We have a habit of doing this with brilliant meaningful words and phrases. Casually employing them inappropriately with the effect that we drift from their true meaning and devalue them over time. Take public consultations for example. A beautiful idea in principle, that we should engage in a meaningful discussion between state and the citizenry before some policy suggestion becomes a reality for said citizens. Yet what we get is 180 page documents written in some impenetrable language that is only accessible to lobbyists and their lawyers. And then we scratch our heads wondering where the trust between the citizen and her government has gone…

Read the rest of this post.

A bright future for the spoken word…

Today I had lunch with a fascinating man…

He is a man with a passion for the spoken word, and a vision for how the fading oral traditions from around world will have a place to explode back into our consciousness, and feed a void that grows within us.

We now have the potential to connect with an infinite pool of like minded people without consideration for geographic boundaries or distance…  Social media can connect us to the people we need to engage with in a way inconceivable not a decade ago.  With new technology we develop new social skills, fitting for the society and tools we constantly evolve.

But what of the old society, what of the old skills, what of the old traditions that formed  the social human as it is now?

We talked of Saxon halls, Celtic roundhouses, and Scandinavian longhouses. Those altars where the basis for modern human communication evolved.   We discussed ritual, discourse, poetry, theatre and debate.  The forms of communication that, each in its own right, expanded the horizons of the human within and the potential of society evolve to the beyond.

image credit wili_hybrid - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/
image credit wili_hybrid - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/

I was reminded of a very dear friend, decendant of the shamanic traditions,  dismissed by a modern society as defunct and a lost cause.  He can be found most days anaesthetised from his rejection through the medium of booze.  Yet he is a keeper of all of the traditions that have brought us to this amazing present.  And in our modern connected online utopia we no longer value him…

A long time ago we sat around the fire in a circle and shared stories.  Now we tweet and blog them without ever needing to make eye contact.  It is the cherishing, the traditions, the forms, and the practice of the spoken word that have brought us from the fire to where we are now.

And the man I had lunch with today, he has a grand vision for the spoken word.  That its traditions be preserved, propagated, taught, championed, housed, and celebrated.  In some years time, when this vision has been realised, I know which fire I will be heading for.

The man I had lunch with today…, his name is William Ayot, and you will hear his name again.