Conversation
From Studyplace
[edit] It has been recommended that this page be merged with Conversations.
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How can we best make conversation into an effective form of online peer production?
Conversation is a primordial form of peer production. As Stephen Miller notes in his excellent eulogy, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, conversation thrives when people interact as peers, thinking together without ulterior purposes attached to their words. Speaking and listening in turn, giving each sufficient opportunity to develop an apposite addition to the common topic, but not so much that it comes to bore or dominate, converting lively exchange into a dull disquisition.
Let us try on StudyPlace to generate thoughtful conversations about important topics as one component of a global cultural commons. A good conversation advances thought. A good conversation is not a contest to assert one person's ideas as sovereign over the minds of all. In a conversation, multiple persons, speaking and listening, together disclose a fuller, truer view of a topic than any one of them can do alone.
[edit] Conversational pitfalls
Various problems can undercut the power of conversation to illuminate matters of interest. Much apparent conversation is little more than a sequence of divergent assertions, each often a conventional opinion well known to all. No one feels the need to listen and reply to what has been said with knowledge, wit, and intelligence. As the failure to listen well in conversation can turn it into a series of statements, at once isolated and isolating, an unwillingness to stick to a topic can turn potential conversation into the proverbial bull session that lurches from this to that, at best with a callow charm. To converse well, people need to exert self-discipline, sticking to a theme until they have heard all they have to say about it, testing now and then with a query or a joke whether they have reached its satiety. A third problem arises from an inability to sense a spectrum of productive interest and curiosity. Some conversations get stuck in smalltalk as people who share little in common avoid awkward silence. At the other end, the expression of deep-seated, heartfelt disagreements rarely makes for enlightening conversations. The zone of conversational illumination exists where people share a genuine interest in the substance of what others think, combined with sufficient disengagement to hear views contrary to their own without feeling threatened or angered by what may be said.
[edit] StudyPlace conversations
We think that conversation can flourish on a Wiki such as StudyPlace with interested contributors asynchronously developing their views on topics concerning what educates. Here are a few initial guidelines, which may themselves change somewhat with further experience with the form.
- Be attentive to what has been said within the conversation and speak to the topic or to points within it, not to inferences about other speakers in the conversation.
- Stick to the topic defined by the heading under which you are contributing. If you think a different topic needs to be introduced, do it with a new heading.
- Build the conversation by adding new information, ideas, queries, or interpretations to it.
- Avoid anger. Evident differences of opinion are an opportunity to think more deeply and constructively about a matter.
[edit] Conversation in cultural experience
[edit] References
Peter Burke. The Art of Conversation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
Stephen Miller. Conversation: A History of a Declining Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
