Depth of Conversation Diet

January 6, 2013 — conversation, depth, twitter

the bird

Charlie Rose talked last week on his show with the creators of twitter about how long and how deep our conversations are today. The adaptation to 140 characters is natural in our world now and creates possibilities.  The flying about of links creates interest in larger deeper meaning.  I agree with them that all the various forms of engagement offer a different way to approach exchange.  My personal favorite link right now is Alan Simpson dancing Gangam style with the can that is being kicked down the road.  To tweet that gives me a high degree of  pleasure because it has great social and political import.

Since I have limited myself to reading only three books this year on the Three Book Diet I have noticed that I read constantly, book or no book.  The way we read and write has not surpassed the book, but if you give up books now, you notice that reading inundates everything, and Google is the best little librarian anyone ever imagined. The data is with us.  In this process I have turned my attention to homework long overdue to my own self.  Writing, drawing, and active creativity needs to balance all the reading.  I used to say you don’t get a healthy body to get a healthy body to get a healthy body…You get a healthy body to enjoy life or the whole thing is stupid.  Literacy is the same ,I now learn.  You don’t read to read to read to read ( except in elementary school).  You read to acquire knowledge and skill to be productive in some way, or reading the entire library is for naught.  What began as an experiment has been very instructive to me in terms of balancing my creating/sucking practice in the written word.  I do love books and research.   Had I not stopped to take note of the imbalance I would be sucking down a book right this minute, rather than writing this to you, gentle reader.

Charlie and the guys eventually discussed the depth of meaning diet.  The conversation diet is similar to the book diet.  It asks you to balance snacks (woot!) with more substantial meals (blogging), and an awareness of same.  A healthy diet today consists of media production as well as consumption.  The interactive phase has just begun.  Tweet seats at live events tell us something about where the twitter bird is heading.  The nature of all the new connecting technology is that it is more crowded every second.  The individual conversation, taking place everywhere all the time is well represented by the little blue bird in flight.  We need to have deep conversations about the state of affairs today.  Let the bird fly for peace.  May the twitter bird be free.  May the twitter bird be happy.  May we use it for the highest good and deepest connection.