Conversation as having “extraordinary complexities, gentle nuances, and ephemeral magic.”
Conversations are organic; their very structure is a give-and-take that allows understanding to happen.
Our reliance on communication machines has caused us to lose our most human skill: making sense through language
We can’t decipher manuals, but invariably, we understand the most complex instructions, provided we can ask a lot of questions and participate in a dialogue.
The sub rosa agenda of a conversation is to give instructions. Giving good instructions is an art.
Companies spend billions of dollars on research and development of new products with sophisticated features, then write instructions for them as an afterthought.